Tumgik
#and my mother insists that i can teach art but I CANNOT stand in front of a class...
sherlock-is-ace · 3 years
Text
.
9 notes · View notes
ficsilike-reblogged · 4 years
Text
Blood in the Rivers: VII
A/N: I apologize for the wait. I hope you guys still like this little story of mine.
Pairing: Oberyn Martell x Ellaria Sand x F!Reader (Tully)
Rating: T (Maybe M??) For Blood, allusions to smut, my continued overuse of italics, poorly written, soft confessions of feelings
Word Count: 8.3k (Someone please take my computer away)
Tumblr media
Read Chapters I-VI here! Or on Ao3!
Chapter Seven: The Price of Happiness
All of Dorne was a delight to the senses. The food was better, the wine more tart, the air itself smelled sweeter and punctuated with the scent of salt of the ocean and the heat of the sun-warmed walls. It was paradise. Never in her life had she met a family more loving and open with their affections—or their squabbles. The Sand Snakes welcomed her with open arms and quelled most of the fears that turned Y/N’s stomach.
And having the company of Sansa and Arya gave Y/N an immeasurable amount of joy. Simply knowing they were alive and well and within her reach let a small bit of weight lift from her shoulders. All of them melded together into a strange camaraderie that Y/N quickly grew accustomed to. Arya trained with Obara, Elia, and Obella—and little Dorea would sometimes sneak away from her mother and Septa to try to keep up with the older girls. And Arya was insistent that Y/N join them at least three times a week. Sansa would sup with Nymeria and Tyene and would drag Y/N along when she wasn’t occupied with Ellaria and Oberyn. They would read to little Loreza to help her sleep. Sarella was still in Oldtown but had sent a raven with a kind word, welcoming Y/N into the fold.
All of it was…perfect. So perfect that Y/N was waiting for something terrible to happen to knock her from the pedestal of the happy life she’d created at Sunspear.
“You are quiet, My Tully,” Ellaria said as they sat together on the sand of the strip of beach just outside the fortress’ walls. A handful of handmaidens waited to be called, standing in Sunspear’s forgiving shadows, with a half dozen guards. Ellaria had stolen Y/N away from Manfrey Martell’s lessons. Oberyn’s cousin was the current Castellan of Sunspear and had been teaching Y/N the proper way of keeping the household and surrounding city running smoothly, as it had for centuries.
“I am enjoying the view,” Y/N replied as she watched Ellaria tie her skirts a little high around her waist as she wanted to wade into the water. Her four daughters were all laughing and splashing a few paces away, without a care and nearly infectious with their joy.
“We agreed to not lie to each other, My Tully. Nor keep secrets.” When she was finished tying her own, Ellaria pulled Y/N to her feet and made quick work of tying her skirts, too. She grasped her hands and led her out to the lapping water.
It was warm and clear—a far cry from the usually-muddy waters of the rivers around Riverrun. Ellaria continued to lead her in until their bundled skirts were in danger of getting wet from the shallow waves but did not release her grip even as they slowed to a stop. She pulled Y/N a little closer and brushed a kiss against her shoulder, exposed in the Dornish style dress Nymeria’s favorite seamstress had tailored especially for her in a pretty sky blue. The ugly scars from the arrow were exposed but very few paid them any mind.
“Tell me what is burdening you.”
“You will think me foolish,” Y/N murmured.
“Never.”
Y/N sighed and squeezed at Ellaria’s hands before wrapping her arms around herself. “Everything here is so…lovely. A paradise.”
“Just as I told you all those moons ago at that wretched wedding; I knew you had the right heart to make Dorne your home.”
It was almost as if Ellaria was trying to banish whatever gloomy thought Y/N had with kisses as she stole one from Y/N’s frowning mouth and then another as she started to smile. “And I am grateful to be here, to have you in my arms now—you and Oberyn both. To be welcomed to happily by your family. But I am worried…the gods have only afforded me this happiness to rip it away from me. Surely I cannot be this happy for the rest of my days.”
“Why do you think that your happiness must have limits? The gods delight in their creations. Why should we not delight in them as well?” Ellaria smiled and looked like a goddess herself in the sunlight and surrounded by clear, sparkling water. “Your happiness does not have a limit because the gods deem it so. Only you can determine how happy you are in this life. I have chosen to take every opportunity to seize happiness, joy, whenever I can. You have brought me such joy, My Tully. I want you to have the same—but you must let yourself.” Ellaria pulled Y/N close again and pressed another kiss to her mouth. “Will you let yourself?” She asked against her lips.
“I will try,” Y/N answered with a laugh.
A sudden splash of water had her sputtering and Ellaria chuckled. “You will,” Ellaria stated, wet fingers trailing against Y/N’s cheek.
Ellaria tasted like saltwater and sunshine when Y/N kissed her again. “I love you,” Y/N said, the words bubbling out of her throat before she could even think to stop them.
“My heart has been shared between you and Oberyn since I saw you at the market. I love you, sweet girl, and I will remind you of that fact every chance you give me.”
**
“You travelled through the Kingswood during a battle?” Y/N could feel her throat tightening with each passing word. Word had come to Oberyn that the Lannisters knew Sandor had been seen in Dorne. Ellaria’s words about embracing joy—and the fact that Ellaria loved her—had lifted her mood for the past handful of days but the news had quickly soured her disposition. She asked plainly what had happened on the way to Dorne with Sansa and Arya and expected to hear that he had taken the most benign route possible and then be on her way. That was not the case. “I told you to take her to safety-”
“The little bird’s alive, ain’t she?” Sandor griped. “She’s fine.”
“Thank the Seven,” she retorted, face still contorted with rage. “I cannot fathom your reason for endangering her—you know the Stone Crows-”
“Aye, the Stone Crows,” he mimicked, remembering the Mountain Clan men Tyrion had brought to King’s Landing and used as reinforcements around the castle during the Battle of the Blackwater. “Stupid bunch of brats with swords. They bleed just like the rest of the Lannister’s cunt forces.” But he dropped his voice and leaned close, letting the scent of blood orange he had on his tongue waft over her. “You were right to leave her care to me. I would never let any hurt come to her. Do not doubt that again.”
Y/N scowled. “And Arya? You were just letting her run about, killing people?”
“She is a little beast. There is no taming that one. You’re lucky I got her here without gagging her.” His burnt face twisted. “I’m sure you taught her that.”
“The only thing I tried to teach Arya was how to use a bow.” Y/N grumbled and rubbed at her temples. “But, thank you for seeing them here—safely. It means a great deal to me.”
“Did you truly kill Gregor?”
The question surprised her, as did the soft tone (as soft as Sandor could be, anyway). “I did.”
“Was it quick?”
“Not as quick as I would have liked.” Y/N sighed. “I am sorry I took that from you, your revenge.”
“You did what you had to do. He deserved what he got.” He glanced at the door to Sansa’s chambers. He had been assigned, by a smug Oberyn who knew that Sandor wanted to leave, to be Sansa’s sworn sword. “The Little Bird would say the gods were kind or some other stupid shit.”
“Are you certain seeing his rotting head would not quell some of that rage? To see he is truly dead? The Silent Sisters haven’t taken it for cleaning just yet.” It was still sitting in a box in one of the fortress’ undercrofts. (Arya had poked at it with the end of a quill and Sansa had steadfastly refused to look at the decomposing lump of flesh when Y/N had told them about her own ‘adventure’ in King’s Landing.)
“No,” he said, final and direct.
“Very well. But I am sure you will lay your eyes upon it eventually. Oberyn has said he wants it dipped in gold and strung up in chains within the throne room once it is clean.” Y/N looked at Sandor, truly looked at him. “Please, be kind to Sansa. While she is learning the ways of the world at Prince Doran’s behest, she still has a gentle heart. And she is very fond of you even if you and I both know nothing will come of this childish infatuation of hers.”
Sandor’s eyes narrowed but he did not say anything.
Y/N took a small step forward, knowing she needed to say this if only to sate the small bit of fear she had in her heart. “But if I ever catch you breaking her heart or using her as your brother intended to use me, I will make sure your skull sits next to his.”
“My lady!” Daisy dashed into the hall and barely cast a glance at Sandor. “Prince Oberyn is waiting for you in his solar.”
Y/N nodded and looked one last time at Sandor and received a half-hearted glare in return before she let Daisy lead her through the gilded, warm halls even though she had traversed this path too many times to count, often in the dark of the night. She tried to shake off the foreboding feeling of the Lannisters knowing Sandor was in Dorne and the annoyance that the swordsman also put Sansa and Arya in harm’s way with minimal success. Daisy left her side with a smile as they reached the opened door and Y/N sighed as she spied him sitting at his desk intensely focused on whatever task was set in front of him. Bits of parchment were scattered about. A well of ink was precariously perched near the edge. The entire room was draped in shades of ruby red and highlights of orange that shimmered in the sunlight that streamed in from the large windows, opened to let in the salted air from the ocean below. Sumptuous cushions were piled beneath the western window and a small table with a cyvasse board was set up across the room near the door that led to his bedchamber. He almost seemed to be a work of art she was fortunate to look upon—a god at rest captured by the finest artist the world had ever known. While she had readily admitted her love to Ellaria, she could never seem to find a time to say it to Oberyn. She knew she loved him, loved him like she loved Ellaria. But it seemed inappropriate to blurt it out over a meal or in the heat of some tryst. (And Ellaria found the entire situation hilarious.)
His head snapped up as he heard her footfalls and his lips pushed up into a smile as he set down his quill and waved her over. “Come here, my moonlight.” He reached out to her with ink-smudged fingers and pulled her into his lap as she laughed.
“What are you working on?” She asked, pulling the bit of parchment he was scratching at off the desk. It looked to be a correspondence to his brother Doran—at least that is what she assumed before Oberyn took it from her grasp and flung it over his shoulder.
“Nothing of importance.” He pressed a kiss just below her ear just to hear her laugh again as his grip squeezed around her waist. “I do have something from home for you though.” He patted at her thigh to have her stand and then he strode over to the single trunk in the corner and opened it. Something blue was clutched in his hand and his smile was contagious as he turned toward her. “Come, my moonlight. Let us see if it will suit you.”
Y/N did as she was bid and walked to his side. Blue velvet unfurled from his grip and she unconsciously reached out for it and let her fingers trace over the delicately embroidered, inky black trout at the center of the cloth. Small, red Pentoshi towers lined the hem in sparkling thread. As she pulled it closer, the faded scent of evergreens and her mother’s perfume met her nose.
Oberyn carefully pulled the cloak from her grasp and then set it upon her shoulders and fastened the aged silver clasps, fashioned to look like fish scales, onto her dress. It fit perfectly. He smiled as he said, “your father said it was the cloak he had made for your mother when they were married. Her bridal cloak—now your maiden’s cloak.”
Y/N flung her arms around his neck and held him tight. “Thank you. Thank you for this.” She knew exactly what it was when he had first pulled it from the trunk. Her mother had always wrapped her in the cloak when the air turned cold within the halls of her father’s keep. It would drag behind Y/N’s little legs to the delight of her mother who would then chase after her and scoop her daughter up into her arms. The cloak would be wrapped around her tightly to escape the chill by her mother’s careful hands. It was like she could hug her mother again in a strange sort of way.
Oberyn laughed as he returned the embrace. He pulled back just enough to press his lips to hers, delving his tongue into her mouth with ease and delighting in the happy sound it coaxed from her throat. His sneaking fingers slid to grab at her ass and smiled against her mouth as he did so.
“But I have a question for you.”
“And I shall answer.”
Oberyn looked at her, dark eyes shining in the sunlight but…the smallest bit of trepidation also seemed to color his face, too.
“What is it, my prince?” Y/N asked, voice soft.
“Is this truly what you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“I realize that I have pressed this all upon you like a man half-crazed. I did not even ask if you wanted to be married—or if you would prefer a life like Ellaria—or a life outside of Dorne and free of me when this war is over. I only had the agreement drawn up after you told me of Tywin’s intentions. I could have stolen you away after your betrothal to him was made public but I knew it would cause bloodshed—and you, my moonlight, have a gentle heart.”
Y/N smiled as she looked at him, heart squeezing. Knowing he further delayed his want for vengeance because he cared for her meant more than words could say. Her thumb swept across his cheeks and she savored the warmth he exuded. “You have a gentle heart, my prince. And I am blessed by the gods to know it.”
Oberyn kissed her softly. “My own mind can be a cruel place. And Stark—Robb—had mentioned how you never spoke of marriage when you were young. It was not something you ever wished of.”
“I was blessed by parents who loved each other fiercely. And Uncle Hoster knew he could never bring a match forward that my father would approve of so he did not try. A child loved as much as I was would only demand the same love in a marriage. It was made increasingly apparent that a loveless marriage was what most women had, especially women of my station. I would not marry if I did not love them. If I was not sure that my heart was safe.”
She could almost taste the words bubbling on his tongue as he opened his mouth, “and I know that I have hurt you-”
“I want to marry you, Oberyn.” She said with a smile, feeling silly, happy tears sting her eyes with Ellaria’s words once again ringing in her head. “I want to call you my husband and I want to be your wife.” Her heart was light and singing in her chest. It was true. She knew that with every fiber of her being.
“You do?”
“I do.”
“You love me,” Oberyn breathed. And then he was smiling at her as if she had hung the sun and stars.
“I love you.” And it was so easy to say.
Oberyn’s warm hands cradled her face and he pressed his mouths to hers. This kiss was the softest he had ever given her, almost reverent. “You love me,” he whispered into her panting mouth as he pulled her ever closer. “Tell me. Tell me again.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.” The words were hummed, happy. “I will love you forever.”
And she believed him.
**
Y/N woke when she heard a tapping at her door.
“Y/N,” the voice whispered on the other side. “Are you awake?” The door creaked open and a small figure slipped in. Arya climbed into her bed and slipped beneath the silk sheets when Y/N waved her forward.
“What is wrong, Arya?” Y/N asked, pulling the younger girl close and trying to keep her eyes open. Dinner with Oberyn and Ellaria had lasted well into the night and was filled with sweet wine and spiced foods and heated kisses that seemed to eat time. The realization that they all loved each other left them drunk on each other’s presence and the wine certainly did not help. Her throat was sore from overuse and she could still feel phantom fingers between her thighs. She must have only been asleep for an hour before Arya knocked.
“Bad dream.”
Y/N hummed and pushed her fingers through Arya’s hair. If she was being honest, Y/N was almost surprised it took Arya this long to crawl into her bed. Sansa had done it at least a dozen times since Y/N had arrived at Sunspear. But Arya, genuinely, kept her hurt close to her chest so Y/N did not blame her for taking the time she needed.
“I keep seeing the Freys toss Mother’s body into the river.”
Y/N instinctively tightened her hold. She had not realized Arya had witnessed the Red Wedding. Sandor must have taken her to The Twins in hopes of reuniting Arya with Robb and Catelyn—a bloodbath greeted them instead.
“I see it over and over when I close my eyes. I want them dead. All of them. Every single Frey needs to be dead-”
“They will be. I’ll make sure of it.” Y/N pressed a kiss to Arya’s forehead. Despite her exhaustion, she meant her promise. All of them would meet The Stranger for their crimes. The joy Ellaria spoke of, that Y/N was quick adopting, seemed to have stretched to vengeance. There would be joy to see their enemies bleed. There would be joy to see them dead. “Even if I have to do it myself.”
“The Boltons, too,” Arya said, voice starting to tighten with unshed tears.
“Oh, yes. We’ll rip them out. Root and stem.” The traitorous Northern house would see a gruesome end, too. No matter if they were holding Winterfell or not.
Arya let herself cry then, curling farther into Y/N’s hold and Y/N rubbed her back with soft hums, letting the young girl finally express her grief. But, eventually, Arya’s sobs quieted to even breaths. She had fallen asleep on Y/N’s chest just as another knock came at the door. Sansa slipped into her room and Y/N found herself between the Stark sisters as the moonlight shone through the balcony opening. “A bad dream?” Y/N whispered as Sansa snuggled into the overstuffed pillow beside her.
Sansa shook her head. “I am happier than I have been in a long time. And I owe it all to you.” She reached out to grasp one of Y/N’s hands as it still rubbed at Arya’s back.
But Y/N shook her head. “You survived because you are strong, little one.”
“It is because of you that Arya is here, that we are alive. We are safe. Together.”
Y/N squeezed her hand. “You and your sister both have been through great and terrible trials. You must be there for each other.”
Sansa pressed closer and tightened her grip on Y/N’s hand. “Can you sing to us? Like you did when we were children?”
Y/N wanted to say that she and Arya were still children—just grown too quick by the terrors of the world. “What would you like to hear, little one?”
“Jenny’s Song. You sang that the night before you left Winterfell.”
“That is a sad song. Are you certain?”
Sansa nodded.
“High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts…”
**
Daisy flittered about her chambers, gathering a handful of dresses and chemises and folding them neatly into a pair of saddlebags. Prince Doran had sent Y/N a raven and requested that she, Oberyn, and Ellaria travel to the Water Gardens so he could make her acquaintance. “Truthfully, I have written Oberyn several times inquiring when I would meet you but he has taken it upon himself to hoard your time. If you are agreeable, I would have you visit the Water Gardens and would host a feast in your honor. Lords and ladies are already arriving so I hope to see you soon.” He signed the missive with a flourish.
When Y/N asked Oberyn about ignoring his brother’s requests to visit the Water Gardens he smirked and kissed her. “It is not a crime to want you all to myself.”
Y/N chided him with a smile and said she’d already sent a raven back to Doran stating that they would be there the following night. The palace Doran called home was only three leagues away along a pleasant, coastal road. Oberyn knew it well as he usually visited his brother once every fortnight. (“But I have been preoccupied, my moonlight!”)
“I can pack my own bags, Daisy,” Y/N said, noticing a strange rigidity to her friend’s posture as she went about her unnecessary task. She tugged at Daisy’s skirts like a child, slowing her from her quick pace. “Something is troubling you.” And then poor Daisy nearly collapsed in tears and Y/N hurried to wrap the other woman in her arms, shushing her sobs. When her cries quieted, Y/N held Daisy’s wet face between her hands. “Tell me. Let me help you.”
Daisy sniffled. “Daemon wants to marry me.”
“But that is happy news?” Y/N asked, genuinely confused. Daisy and Daemon seemed more in love than ever since coming to Dorne.
“Father will never allow it.” More tears trickled from Daisy’s eyes.
Seeing her dear friend so distraught pulled a heated type of anger from her chest and Y/N curled her hands tighter around Daisy’s face, making sure she listened. “Your father didn’t say anything when we were trapped during the Battle of Blackwater. He did not send a raven to see how you fared. He did not inquire after you after I moved you to Dorne out of a selfish desire to keep you by my side, to keep you safe. Tell me: do you want to marry Daemon?”
“I do,” she hiccupped. “More than anything. He even sent a raven to his lord father for his approval.”
“And he gave it readily, did he not?” she asked, already knowing the answer and watched as Daisy nodded. “Then you have no barrier. If Lord Allyrion requires a dowry, I will pay it. I will pay for the entire wedding if it means you smile again.” If Y/N was allowed to be happy then surely Daisy was, too. Her good, sweet Daisy.
“But Father-”
“Your father can come to Sunspear and speak to me if he thinks to stand in the way of your happiness.”
Daisy sniffled again and pushed out a shaking breath. “I would never ask you to-”
“You didn’t ask, Daisy. But I am telling you that I will not allow your father to keep you from being happy.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Daisy’s forehead and felt a bit of tension leave her shoulders. “You and Daemon are traveling with us to the Water Gardens. We can celebrate your betrothal alongside mine.”
Daisy’s smile was watery but sincere and she suddenly lunged forward to wrap her arms around Y/N in a tight hug. And Y/N was simply happy to see Daisy relieved of her turmoil—at least for a moment. And she meant what she said; she would fight Daisy’s father for her to marry Daemon. And she knew she would win.
The Stark sisters and the Sand Snakes met them at the gates of Sunspear and wished them a pleasant journey. “Please give Prince Doran my regards,” Sansa said before they departed. Y/N knew she missed Doran’s company and teachings, he had sent her away from the Water Gardens to Sunspear when he’d been given word that Y/N was coming to Dorne. And while Sansa liked not having to sneak through the halls to avoid Myrcella, Y/N knew she adored Doran and everything he taught her.
The ride was enjoyable and short and Y/N took the opportunity to let her mare run through the shallow waters. The horse was a gift from Oberyn, a traditional Dornish betrothal gift. Sand Steeds were a point of pride for the Dornish; could run for a night, a day, and another night without tiring or floundering. Most were treated as dotingly as children. The horse was as dark as night with a burnt orange mane and tail—Y/N had named her Qēlos, the High Valyrian word for star. She was the most beautiful horse that Y/N had ever seen and the smoothest ride she’d ever experienced.
But soon the palace of the Water Gardens crested on the horizon, rising from the sand with white and yellow stone and brining the scent of blood orange groves. Lush greenery spilled over the walls as did the sound of trickling water. The golden gates were opened by a pair of hooded guards who bowed as they passed. Servants lined the courtyard to welcome them and handle their horses and bags, each of them bowing in turn as well. Y/N barely had time to admire the beautiful, arching architecture of the palace before Oberyn and Ellaria both grabbed at her hands and all but pulled her inside. She craned her neck and looked everywhere she could as she was pulled this way and that, down a hall, around a corner, further into the shadowed halls by her eager betrothed and paramour. The entire palace seemed to hum with life. Chambers and apartments were filled with visiting lords and ladies. Servants were slipping by, arms filled with dresses or linens or food. Music whispered from around some other corner.
They eventually slowed in front of a beautiful white door banded with bronze and two guards nodded at Oberyn before pushing it open. The solar was filled with more white marble and fluttering white curtains that overlooked the manicured gardens and a handful of pools and fountains. The furniture was a warm, golden wood and every surface had a bowl of some sort of berry or wine or golden trinket or statue. A man in a wheeled chair was sitting behind the perfectly organized desk and looked up from his work with a smile as he heard the door open. His face was kind and greying black hair was cropped to his shoulders. Robes of orange hugged his thin shoulders and sparkled with golden thread.
“Doran, this is-”
Doran waved a hand and dismissed Oberyn’s introduction. “Lady Tully. We meet at long last.”
Y/N quickly curtseyed and placed her hand in his when he reached for her, smiling when he pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles. “It is wonderful to meet you, Prince Doran.”
He patted her hand and then wheeled himself around the desk. “You are early. I would have met you at the gates.”
“We never keep your time tables, brother.”
Doran chuckled affectionately. “I know. But you are all here now. I will make the proper introductions at the feast tomorrow. I want you to enjoy my home before the wedding.”
“You will come to Sunspear, won’t you?” Ellaria asked with a smile.
Doran nodded. “I will be there next month for the festivities. I would not miss my only brother’s wedding. I would have preferred to have it earlier,” there was a pointed look at Oberyn who only smiled, unperturbed, “but I understand that Oberyn wanted you to be ‘settled’ in Sunspear before making you a Martell.”
Y/N smiled at Oberyn without thinking. It had been Oberyn’s idea to hold off on the wedding and she was grateful. Having the stretch of time, letting her heart settle, before her life changed again in another way was a quiet kindness that she would always hold dear.
“Did little Loreza enjoy the book I sent for her nameday?” Doran asked.
“She did,” Ellaria answered, “insisted on having Sansa read it every night.”
“Sansa sends her love,” Y/N quickly added.
“She is a fine lady. I was lucky to have her here despite the unfortunate circumstances.” It was said so earnestly that Y/N couldn’t help another smile splitting her face.
A quick knock at the door revealed Daisy, escorted by a beaming Daemon, carrying a familiar wooden box. They both curtseyed or bowed in turn before carefully setting the box on the edge of Doran’s desk and then excusing themselves, Daisy winking as she went and letting Daemon curl his hand around hers right before the door shut in its frame again.
An anticipatory silence stretched through the room as they all looked at the box. It was simple. No embellishments or special cuts of wood. It was just a box. But Doran reached out and dragged a finger across it like it was made of something precious.
“I shall like to speak with Lady Tully for a moment,” he said quietly without taking his eyes off the box.
“Of course,” Oberyn said before pressing a kiss to Y/N’s cheek. “We shall just be at the pools,” he added, mostly for Y/N’s benefit so she could know where to find them.
Ellaria also kissed her cheek before following Oberyn out, providing some comfort, and soon Y/N was left alone with the ruling Prince of Dorne.
Doran rolled back around his desk and gestured for Y/N to take a seat in the ornately carved chair across from him and she quickly settled onto the white linen cushion. She was equal parts nervous and hopeful as Doran gave her a soft look she couldn’t quite decipher. “I will admit that I had my reservations when your raven first arrived. Fostering your little wolf was not a part of my plan but it was a welcome surprise. Lady Sansa is quite the student. She would have made quite the formidable Princess of Dorne.”
Y/N cocked her head to side at that, wondering what he meant, but he pressed on.
“And now you have brought me a wonderful gift.” He opened the box, sliding the wooden cover off with ease and then reached inside. The oversized skull had been dipped in gold only a few days prior and glittered in the bright sunlight as Doran held it aloft. “To know he is dead has brought my soul a small reprieve of the ache it has felt for decades.” The sound of the skull hitting the desk as he set it down was low and heavy. His fingers spanned over the cap and his nails bit into the gold. “Oberyn has always been the viper in the grass—ready and willing to strike at a moment’s notice. A willful little brother who seemed to outshine the sun whenever he was happy and burn anyone who tempted his wrath.” Doran fixed her with his dark gaze. “But I am sure you have seen that firsthand.”
“I have,” Y/N answered.
Doran nodded and did not move his hand from the dead man’s head. “You are like him, aren’t you? A burning rage just simmering beneath your skin. But you are able to hold your wrath and ruin back to play the game.” He hummed and Y/N tried not to fidget in her chair like a child. Doran was more perceptive than almost everyone she had ever met and she was waffling between being impressed and being innerved. “If you can kill a beast like this and still be gentle, you will be a fine Martell.” His fingers finally lifted from the skull to reach out toward her again and Y/N readily placed her hand in his and smiled as he squeezed her hand. “Whatever you need, simply ask. I will make sure you receive it.”
**
The feast was a decadent affair. Filled with food and wine and music to delight every sense. And the assembled crowd had roared when Doran introduced her as, “Lady Y/N Tully—Slayer of the Mountain!” Oberyn kept a hand over her leg, dragging his fingers against her thigh and growing more and more bold as the night continued on until he was all but cupping her through the flowing blue silk of her skirts. Ellaria pressed berries against Y/N’s smiling mouth as she laughed, knowing exactly what Oberyn was doing.
The sticky night air had her pulling off the thin cloak she had about her shoulders, letting the golden Myrish lace pool around her waist. A few of the guests let their eyes linger on the scars on her exposed chest and back—or the thin bit of scarring across her cheek and then asked if she’d be willing to tell her story. Stating “I was shot by a fool” was infinitely less riveting than “I was able to evade The Mountain’s blade” but both stories gained her a bit of fanfare regardless. The golden skull was displayed in front of her on the table like a shining beacon of how she, a lady, brought a small bit of vengeance on behalf of the ruling family of Dorne.
“The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children.” It was something Manfrey had told her during her studies, face solemn and sad. And Y/N watched almost every person revere the gold-dipped skull in a sort of wicked appreciation before they were formally introduced.
The only person who seemed unnerved by it was Princess Myrcella, tucked into the arm of Prince Trystane. She was too polite to wrinkle her nose at the display of carnage and vengeance but pointedly did not look at it even as Trystane marveled at how large the skull was.
“Dorne suits you, Princess,” Y/N said to Myrcella knowing the young Princess was just as much out of her element as Y/N had been in King’s Landing.
“You as well it would seem,” Myrcella said with a small smile. “I hope to speak with you about…about your duties here. Prince Doran has said you’re very capable.”
Y/N nodded with a smile of her own. “I shall answer any question you may have, Princess.”
Trystane, heir to the throne of Dorne, was definitely his father’s son but seemed to have inherited a bit of a flirtatious streak from his uncle as he managed to snag a berry from Ellaria’s bowl while getting Y/N to agree to a dance. He winked as he walked away with a furiously blushing Myrcella still on his arm and Oberyn laughing into the night air.
“Careful, my prince, it seems Trystane is trying to steal our Tully,” Ellaria mused with a sly smile.
Oberyn leaned close to press a kiss against Y/N’s throat and smirked when she shivered. “Is it true, my moonlight?”
“Oh, yes. You’ve found me out. It was all a ruse to marry a too-young prince and have the Riverlands invade Dorne.” She gasped as Oberyn pinched at her inner thigh, pleasant ripples shooting up her leg and coiling in her stomach.
“Careful. Careful.”
The mischief that sparkled in his eyes made Y/N smile and she placed her hand over his and squeezed, for herself more than him she supposed, and she grasped Ellaria’s hand, too. “The gods could not take me from you both. I promise you that.”
But then Harmen Uller then swept her into a dance, not necessarily waiting for her to accept his hand before pulling her out of her seat, and drew a hearty laugh from her throat as they nearly bowled over other dancing couples. Ellaria then stole her for a dance of her own and then Trystane proved himself to be a graceful dancer, too.
It was all so…perfect.
Y/N pressed a kiss to Ellaria’s cheek as Oberyn danced with little Lady Coryanne Uller, Ellaria’s niece. She was a girl not but five and already named the heir to Hellholt after her father.
“I just need a moment to catch my breath, my love.”
“Do not be too long. I do believe Lord Allyrion is waiting his turn for a dance,” Ellaria said with a chuckle.
Y/N smiled and promised she would be back soon and then started toward one of the side doors of the grand hall, passing Doran as she did and squeezing his shoulder as she went. A servant opened the door with a soft smile and a small bow, letting her out into one of the halls. She slipped through and heaved a sigh when the door closed behind her. The music was muted and the air cooler against her heated skin.
A soft noise caught her attention in the quiet of the hall and her curiosity led her to peek around the corner to see Daemon and Daisy wrapped around each other. Again. Y/N stifled a laugh and turned away, continuing down the hall in the opposite direction. A handful of guards were stationed along the wall, each of them acknowledging her presence in one way or another as she found her way out onto a portico overlooking the still water pools. The blood orange trees swayed in the cool night breeze and brought the scent of citrus to her nose. She leaned against a carved column with a hum, resting for just a few breaths.
“My lady.”
Y/N stood straight and looked out into the night.
A short figure emerged from the shadows, dressed in a hooded cloak and walking with a limp. They reached up to pull off the hood and-
“Tyrion?” The name was pushed out of her in a rush.
The Lannister cautiously moved closer to her on the pink marble of the pools’ terrace. “My lady, I have come to warn you-”
“Warn me? Your family would be insane to think they could come to Dorne and leave unscathed.” Tyrion pursed his lips—it was then that she noticed how bruised his face had become. Molted purple and blue skin covered half his cheek and arced over his eye. “What did she do to you?”
“Cersei has never been fond of me,” that was all he said. “I am sailing for Essos. But I needed you to understand—they know.”
“Know what? Now is not the time for riddles-”
“They know that Dorne has sided against the Crown.” His bruised face flushed with a vibrant blush she could see even in the dim light. “They are coming. And Cersei and my father are determined to hurt you.”
“They won’t make it through the Bone Way. If the Targaryens and their dragons could not conquer Dorne, a tired army from the Westerlands cannot.”
“My lady, please, listen to me. They are not coming with an army—not yet. I told you—they want to hurt you.”
“Let us help you. Oberyn can-”
“My lady?” Daisy’s voice echoed in the hall and reverberated out into the night air. “My lady?”
Y/N turned. “A moment, Daisy!” But when she turned back, Tyrion was gone.
Daisy stepped out onto the portico with a frown, lips swollen from her rendezvous with Daemon. She glanced out into the dark, looking for what Y/N had been seeing. “What is it, my lady? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Y/N cast one last glance out into the dark terrace and saw nothing. Tyrion was gone. “It must have been the wine.” She needed to speak to Doran. Now. But she refused to spoil Daisy’s happy night. News of her betrothal to Daemon had been met with joy and cheers just before the feast had begun and Y/N wanted to let her friend have as much happiness as she could.
“Prince Oberyn is looking for you.”
She nodded and let Daisy lead her back to doors of the grand hall before shooing her way. “Go. I know Daemon is waiting for you in the shadows.” The happy and embarrassed blush that bloomed on her cheeks made Y/N laugh before she skittered away, back into the arms of her love.
Y/N sucked in a deep breath and smoothed her skirts. It would do no good to run in screaming that the Lannisters were coming. She had the most tenuous grasp on belonging here, in Dorne.
“Are you well, princess?” One of the servants asked, hand on the door and ready to let her in. He was young, she could tell. Probably no older than Arya.
“Not a princess just yet,” she said with a smile and trying to ignore how her heart was in her throat. “But I thank you, yes. I am still acclimating to the heat, I am afraid.” It was an easy explanation.
“Shall I fetch you some water?”
Her smile grew. “No, no thank you. What is your name?”
“Gyles, princess,” he said with a tip of his head, dark hair shorn short.
She chuckled. He seemed insistent on the honorific. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Gyles.” She turned to the other servant, not wanting to be rude. “And you? What shall I call you?”
“Ilyn, my lady.” There was a sickly sweetness to his tone and his smile a bit too wide for his face.
Something about him turned her stomach within an instant but she smiled regardless, the perfect lady. “Pleased to meet you, Ilyn.” She turned to Gyles and nodded, letting him push open the door. Y/N slipped in and quickly moved to find Doran but was swept up into a familiar embrace.
“You mustn’t slip away without a word, my moonlight. You are the guest of honor.”
She turned in Oberyn’s grasp and felt a small bit of relief at the sight of his smiling face. “My prince, I must speak to you and your brother.”
His smile faded. “What has happened?”
She shook her head, letting her hands slide across the golden brocade of his robes to grab at the leather of his belt as if that would keep her mind from spinning. “I cannot tell you here. Please, my prince, please.”
Oberyn’s lips drew into a thin line and he nodded once before grabbing her hand and leading her toward Doran.
**
She did not sleep.
Ellaria had to pull Y/N from Doran’s solar and put her to bed like a child when she had started to sway on her feet. But all of them, every single one of them, were so sure that the Lannisters could not touch them.
But Y/N could feel a terrible, creeping sensation engulfing her entire body. She wanted them to be right. She wanted the Lannisters to be too weak or foolhardy to actually hurt the Martells. But something in her stomach told her to be wary.
So, she sat on the edge of her featherbed and looked out the open window and into the night sky. Watched the water lap in the pools while the air smelled of the lush gardens. She hadn’t readied for bed aside from kicking off her golden sandals, staying in the blue silk dress Oberyn and Ellaria had insisted she wear tonight. They liked her in blue. “We will have all the time in the world to dress you in our colors, My Tully. For now, we shall see you in blue.”
The din of the feast eventually faded as guests retired to their chambers or fell asleep in their seats in the grand hall, bellies full of good food and drink. None of them knowing of the threat of the lions. As the dark sky started to turn pink with dawn, she heard it.
Someone was whistling.
And she knew the tune.
And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low? Only a cat of a different coat, that’s all the truth I know.
She slipped off her bed and over to the door, taking care to open it slowly to avoid the creak of the hinges.
In a coat of gold or a coat of red, a lion still has claws, and mine are long and sharp, my lord, as long and sharp as yours.
She stepped out into the hallway and listened. There was nothing. Nothing except for the whistle.
And so he spoke, and so he spoke, that lord of Castamere, but now the rains weep o’er his hall, with no one there to hear.
Y/N followed the sound across the fortress, hearing it grow louder with every step. Her heart roared in her ears. Her knees knocked together like a newborn foal. She was not brave.
She was scared.
Yes now the rains weep o’er his hall, and not a soul to hear.
A figure slipped around the corner and she pumped her shaking legs, willing herself to go faster, to please go faster as she followed and Y/N realized with a terrible sense of dread that the only door in that hallway led to Prince Doran’s personal chambers.
A scream rang out.
Y/N pushed open the door in time to see Ilyn standing over Doran, bloody knife in hand. Trystane was huddled behind his father, sitting in a pool of blood. Doran was clutching at a gushing wound across the top of his chest, eyes hard and defiant.
Before she could even think to do something rational, Y/N ran at Ilyn and tackled him to the ground. The marble was unforgiving to her legs but she barely felt it as she struggled with the man over the knife, climbing over him in an attempt to gain the upper-hand, to keep him subdued. Her hand closed over the blade as he shoved it toward her throat and she felt it cut through her palm, tearing skin and muscle from the bone. She hadn’t even realized she was screaming until Ilyn slammed his other fist into her throat and rendered her silent for just a moment. The blow shoved her backward and off him just enough for the would-be assassin to scramble up to his feet and dart back out into the hall.
Y/N scrambled over to the Dornish princes, trying to see if they needed help but Doran waved her on, pressing a fist against his wound. “Go!” He said through gritted teeth. “Get him.”
And Y/N did as she was told. By now, the halls were filling with people—some wondering why people were screaming and others seeming to know exactly what happened.
“Stop him!” She screamed, pointing her bloody hand at the fleeing Ilyn as she continued to give chase. “Stop him!”
Ilyn heard her scream and sneered at her over his shoulder just as he made it to the entry hall.
She wouldn’t catch him. She knew it. He was too fast but she could run until her legs gave out. “Stop him! Stop him!” She continued to scream, praying someone would.
Just as Ilyn stepped into the growing sunlight, he stumbled. A choking, gurgling sound escaped him and Y/N ran to see what had stopped him. It was Oberyn—the head of his spear buried deep in Ilyn’s stomach.
Oberyn’s mouth was moving, she could see it. He was coaxing something from Ilyn even as blood dripped from his mouth and spattered against the marble floor. But all she could hear was the thump-thump-thump of her heart and the blood pumping through her veins.
Y/N jumped as Daisy grasped at her uninjured hand. The poor girl held up her hands with a shaking smile, like she was trying to help a feral cat. “My lady, I need to tend to your hand.” The words were muffled.
Y/N let Daisy lead her back into the great hall where the remnants of the feast had not yet been cleared away and slumped into the chair deemed hers the night before. She barely winced when Daisy started to clean her angry wound. She barely noticed when the maesters came in to help.
What she did notice, however, was a box placed atop her forgotten dinner plate. Her name was written on a bit of parchment in a familiar scrawl.
Her fingers shook as she reached out for it.
“Don’t, my lady,” Daisy hissed. “You don’t know what’s inside!”
But Y/N unlatched it and pushed open the lid. Her scream choked the air from her lungs.
Sitting inside the box, on a golden cushion, was the head of her father.
A/N: Welp. Please let me know what you think. :)
Beautiful people who asked to be tagged: @roxypeanut​ @lostinwonderland314​ @fandomreblogsnoshame @arianawills​ @nyrnerosmartell​ @5hundreddaysofsummer​ @honestlystop @huliabitch​ @youhavemyfantasticbeasts​ @karmezii​ @thesadvampire​ @sarcasmisakindofmagic​
254 notes · View notes
lemurious · 3 years
Text
Like starlight turned to flame
for @alkarinqque for @officialtolkiensecretsanta 
Happy holidays and thank you so much for a wonderful prompt! Hope you enjoy what it turned to! <3
cw: death
They stand before Eönwë, huddled in cloaks that offer little protection against the rain pelting their bodies, and their hands seek each other.
Elrond can barely focus on the question and does not understand why Eönwë even considers their kindred to be a choice, when to him it has only ever been family. How could he think of himself as anyone other than an Elf, Noldor and Sindar mixed, as his grey eyes and black hair can attest, and secretly, while berating himself for excessive pride, he likes to tell himself that he got the better parts of both. The boundless curiosity and the compassion. The courage and the protectiveness. Everything he and his brother have managed to scrounge up from their two sets of parents lost to the iron law of the Valar, whose emissary is now looking down at them, waiting for their response.
Elrond tears his gaze from the figure in shining mail, seemingly immune to the downpour, back towards the disorienting sight of a sunken shore, their homes now lying under the wave. He wonders if their grief will ever fade. This year, it has kept returning like a tide, swallowing him in the heavy silence of their childhood being gone, forcing him to pace the hallway of their ramshackle house until he would give in and knock on Elros’s door, curl up in a chair next to his brother to watch the flames dance in their fireplace through the long winter night. Together.
At least they have each other, he thinks, for the last fleeting moment before Elros squeezes his fingers hard enough to hurt. Before Elros looks at the Herald of the Valar and says in a voice loud and firm: “I choose to belong to the kindred of Men, my lord.”
---
Idril has dragged her husband through the crumbling tunnels and foaming waves, from the only home they have ever known turned to ash and ruin, through the doom that has been hanging over her head since she was too young to remember, through the wrath of all the Seas encircling Valinor, and she will be damned if she has to lose him to something as simple as death.
She stands tall and straight, a circlet of diamonds on her head, the steel of her feet shining like silver, Curufin’s best work, her eyes ablaze with the light of the Trees that could never be quenched, not even by the darkness of Helcaraxë.
Idril Silverfoot, who has walked through ice and looked death in the face and then dared to be happily married anyway, stares right into the face of Mandos and demands that Tuor be allowed to join her as one of the Eldar.
After all, even the Valar have admitted that Tuor has brought hope to Arda, ignoring her part as usual, though now she is glad about it, because it helps her make her case to keep Tuor with her, immortal as he secretly believes himself to be anyway, having been raised among the Elves.
“Your plea has been accepted,” says Mandos, “but the balance shall be retained. One born from you will have to leave the Elvenkind and become a mortal Man instead.”
She attempts to argue some more, but Mandos is implacable, and in any case she cannot think far beyond the joy of having rescued her husband from what they both consider to be the Doom of Men – what cruel foolishness would it be to call it a Gift?
She already knows that they will not take her son, who has been cursed to ride the skies with a Silmaril in the front of his ship, a mortal body could never survive the slow, quiet destruction wrought by the fire imprisoned within the jewel.
Idril’s grandsons are all but lost to her, she has never met them, even their own mother barely knew them and could tell her little about them when questioned.
Idril has always been a survivor and she knows that it inevitably means making the kind of choices that could pull her apart if she is not careful enough. She only hopes that whoever will be born of her blood and destined for mortality will be strong enough to make their life a happy one in spite of all their losses.
---
Before the bleakness of the aftermath, there was the terror of the War, and just before that, a moment of respite, a time to set aside the fears, and learn to fight, and sing, and gather mussels on the shore.
A moment to hold the hands of the two Elves who have turned from captors into fathers in record time, to call their names to ward against the nightmares. A moment to feel like children again, like the sons of someone still within their reach.
Elros swears to treasure every one of these moments after the evening when, during one of his solitary strolls along the beach, a figure rises from the waves and introduces himself as Ulmo, the Lord of Waters.
Elros shivers in fear, frozen on the spot and unable to move even if the alternative is drowning. But Ulmo does not threaten to drown him, instead, he looks on as if with a great sorrow, and tells of yet another doom that the Valar have now hung above their heads.
“You will be asked to choose,” he says. “And if neither of you accepts the Doom of Men, Lord Mandos will choose for you.”
Elros has never considered himself of any kindred but Elven, but he knows that neither has Elrond, and more, that Elrond, if given a choice, would spend his entire life learning the Elven lore by night, healing the wounds left by the long sequence of wars by day.
Meanwhile Elros has to admit to himself that he does not have any passion save the vague but persistent wish to one day become a great lord and rule a kingdom, a prospect so dim, given his circumstances, that he keeps scolding himself for naivety.
He could become a Man, he thinks, but he feels so young when confronted by the enormity of the decision. So childlike. He just does not want to, which reminds him of his tears when he clutched his mother and watched her kiss him and his brother and walk away. The only clear memory he has of her.
He is too scared to accept this doom for himself. Could he do it for his brother?
---
“You have been deep in thought all day, and they do not seem to be pleasant thoughts,” says Maglor to Elros, who keeps lingering in the kitchen after dinner, long after Elrond ran off back to the library as always, and Maedhros went outside to try to repair the roof that has just started leaking again. “Would you care to share them with me?”
Elros shakes his head. He tells himself that he should not add to his father’s worries, though deep inside he is terrified that Maglor would make him choose. Or that Elrond would find out, and would then insist of taking the curse upon himself instead, and he would never, ever be able to forgive himself for dragging his brother into it. Yet he feels that if he had to face all of it alone he would crumble, and then the truth would come out anyway, with all its terrible consequences.
“Atya, have you ever regretted something you have not done? Especially, something that – that could have helped one of your brothers, though he would have never found out?”
Maglor looks shocked. He turns away and visibly struggles to compose his face before answering. “Too many times, kid. I should have… told my brothers not to follow our father. Should have stopped them at the gates of Doriath… Should have… should have stood in the place of the one my brother loved the most, on that muddy battlefield, for maybe then he would have lived and my brother would still be happy and carefree. Should have kept all my brothers from pursuing the Silmarils at any cost.”
“But you could have been killed!”
“I would not seek death, but it is not always a wrong choice to risk your own life to protect those you love.”
Elros suddenly lunges at Maglor, wrapping his arms around his waist, and hugs him tight.
“Thank you, Atya,” he sniffles. “Could you sing me a lullaby tonight, as I fall asleep?”
“Tonight and any other night, for as long as you wish,” Maglor replies, a little confused and worried about what has just happened. Well, it is a miracle those kids have managed to be as cheerful as they are, most of the time, given what they already had to live through.
---
Elrond lets go of Elros’s arm in disbelief. That is what Elros chooses to do? Has he ever really known his brother? And does it mean - does it mean that after such a brief lifespan of Men they will never again  -- he turns to look at Elros, to yell at him, call him a traitor.
He sees that Elros has gone deadly quiet, teeth clenched, staring straight ahead, but Elrond knows his brother and can tell that he is shaking in fear.
Elrond’s anger evaporates in an instant, as he pulls Elros into a massive hug and whispers in his ear: “It will be alright. I understand. It may not be my choice, but you will always be my brother.” He feels Elros relax with every word.
---
Mandos is kind. He gives Elros many times the lifespan of Men and lets him build a home halfway between his mother and his brother, though he misses his fathers the most, all of them, and all of them are lost – in the fire, in the sky, on the shores. Like the Silmarils.
Elros raises children of his own, and tells them that their siblings will be the strongest bond they will ever have, so they would better cherish it. They listen, these kids with dark grey eyes, too large in their faces, too solemn for their age. They had to grow up quickly, as befits the children of Men and the heirs of the High King.
Uncle Elrond visits every year and tells them stories, and teaches them the arts of healing, and stands with Elros on the tallest tower watching the stars fade into the West, awaiting one of them, forbidden for the other.
They whisper their memories to be kept for as long as one of them lives, and swear an oath to find each other, and all their parents, again, however long it took them and even if it meant going beyond the circles of Arda.
---
When time comes for him to leave, Elros does not even feel cheated, just ready. His children have long grown up, he has become a grandfather and a great-grandfather so many times he finds it difficult to remember all the names.
He calls for Elrond, who has been at his side for days, and suddenly there is a shadow on the other side of his bed, and a familiar voice begins a lullaby Elros remembers from his childhood. “Thank you, Atya,” he murmurs as the colors begin to fade.
In the end, he did not even have to lie, Elros thinks. It was his choice, perhaps for a different reason than Elrond might have guessed, but it was, truly, his, and it brought him the kingdom he did not dare to dream of, and the family he could have never imagined, loved even fiercer because of their mortality, like a flame that has its own beauty compared to the starlight.
He would make his choice a thousand times over, Elros admits to himself as the walls fade into the mist, and he feels more than hears the voice of Mandos rumbling in his ears, assuring him with the sadness of one who is forced to deal in law, and not in love, that he will grant the brothers their own oath in recompense for the ones he has bestowed upon them, that it will not be their final farewell.
46 notes · View notes
Text
The Right Side of Wrong- Ch 1: W-I-C-K-E-D
Words: 2,435
Warnings: nightmares, mentions of gang activity, mentions of death and trauma, stress
A/N: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH FINALLY!! I’m not sure how many of you were dying for me to start posting again, but frankly, I was. I missed getting feedback from you guys! I’m so very glad to finally be back and able to post actual writing for you guys. As you know, I spent quite a bit of time trying to perfect this story so I really hope you guys enjoy it like you did the first one!
(If this is the first time you’ve seen one of my stories: Hi! Welcome! Feel free to check out my first rewrite, “Call Me A Freak”, for a better grasp on what is going on in this one!)
Call Me A Freak- Ch 1 | Preview | Ch 2
~ ~ ~
Tumblr media
I blinked, attempting to register my surroundings. It was just too dark. I could make out the low fog settled around my feet as I stumbled forward. It almost glowed, a light blue-ish, green-ish color.
There were murmurs up ahead. People.
In my hazy determination to find them, I ran directly into something. The top half of my body fell forward, catching myself on the edges of the cauldron.
The steam that emanated from it blurred my vision as I pushed myself away from it. The water inside bubbled and boiled, the same sickly color as the fog around me. As I rubbed my eyes, I approached once more, getting a better look inside.
Bobbing across the top, were dozens of ripe, red apples.
“W-” I could hear someone whisper in the distance. “I-C-”
I turned on my heel, but the sound came from everywhere, surrounding me.
“K-”
I tried to run away from the cauldron, but the minute I was around one, I ran into another.
“E-D.”
I kept running, doing my best to dodge cauldrons and skip over the fallen apples that littered the floor. In a blink, I found myself running through the halls of Auradon Prep.
They were empty. Along the way, a few apples were discarded on the ground, all with single bites in them.
Across the lockers that lined the school, in large purple letters, were the words: LONG LIVE EVIL.
That was my work. It had to be. And my paint.
“Mother always knows best,” the quiet voice came back.
I dashed out of the hallway and down the stairs towards the front of the school.
It was too empty. Too quiet. And too messy.
“Show her. Pass every test.”
The entrance to the school was a mess. Apples and papers everywhere. The Beast statue was defaced with spray paint.
“Hear her voice in your head.”
And flying high over the school was a new flag. An old design which I had long since discarded. A silhouette of my mother, the words ‘Long Live Evil’ in green on a purple background.
“Evil is the only real way to win,” the voice beckoned me.
~ ~ ~
My hands were holding me up, pressed against the Beast statue at the front of Auradon Prep.
I noticed multiple familiar faces within the crowd of paparazzi. Hadn’t they learned their lesson? Hadn’t any of them?
I had been known to shriek, break down, and run off while on camera. A result of sensory overload most often, but it could also be triggered by… uncomfortable questions.
All of my friends had become experts in the art of avoiding paparazzi specifically for this reason. They knew I was still healing and god was it hard to heal when you were also the girlfriend of the king.
So, sometimes, when I needed to be by myself, I wandered alone and that’s almost always where they found me. Photographers and interviewers all desperately looking for a brief word right when I needed space.
They weren’t the best on timing.
“Only three days to the Royal Cotillion!” a young woman exclaimed, shoving a mic at my face. I wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted me to say in response to that, so I nodded, smiling tightly.
“Ever think that a girl like you would be a Lady of the Court?”
I blinked, temporarily blinded by a particularly close shot at my face.
“How do you feel being the most envied girl in Auradon?”
I scoffed, but was bombarded with more questions.
“Okay! All right!” I could hear Ben exclaim, pushing his way through the crowd towards me. I sighed in relief, glad to know that someone would be able to get me out of there. “Excuse me.”
He held a half eaten apple in his hand, which looked suspiciously similar to the ones in my dream. That had been a common occurrence recently: deja vu.
He wrapped an arm around me the minute he reached me. He had on one of his signature blue suits with a gold handkerchief. I quickly turned into his shoulder to regain my composure while the crowd turned on him.
“Did you ever think you’d be with a Villain Kid?”
Ben and I both whipped around to look at the woman who had asked. I bit down tightly on the inside of my cheek as Ben chuckled next to me. Multiple people had gone silent, waving mics in Ben’s face to pick up his answer.
“We’re done here,” he responded politely, grabbing me from the opposite shoulder and leading me away from the cameras.
In a whirl, with perfect timing, as always, Fairy Godmother took command of the cameras, preventing them from following the two of us as we left and asking them to make their exit.
“You feeling alright?” he automatically asked, running a hand over my back.
“Fine,” I said, quickly. “A little overwhelmed, but I’ll be alright.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. “It gets frustrating at times. Sometimes I wonder if they say some of those things just to get a reaction out of me. They want to watch me break and be the villain my mother was.”
“Don’t pay any attention to them.”
“Well, that’s a lot easier said than done, right?”
“I know, I know,” he sighed. “You know, maybe we should do something. We should go somewhere. Get away.”
While I appreciated the suggestion, I was so tired that when I thought of getting away, that included getting away from Ben. I wanted to just have some time to myself again. Some privacy again. I hadn’t seen a moment alone practically since I had gotten off the island.
“Yeah,” I replied halfheartedly, but he didn’t even seem to notice, distracted by his own watch.
“I have a council meeting. I’m so late!” His face pinched in stress. I knew he didn’t want to leave me here, especially after just promising some time to ourselves, but he had responsibilities.
“That’s okay,” I told him. I had gotten really good at pretending like things were totally fine, the Auradon way. On the Isle, if I was upset, I would hide it underneath my anger, but here I had to smile and act like a feather when bricks were weighing me down.
“We’ll do it sometime!” He promised, leaning down to kiss my cheek, but he hadn’t made contact before someone else was dragging me away.
“If we don’t do a fitting for your gown right this minute, you’ll be dancing in your bathrobe, okay?” Evie insisted.
Turns out everyone was stressed, because Evie was never so forward unless something needed to be done. In fact, she was rather efficient nowadays, but all that meant was piling on more work than she needed because she could power through it.
“Hi!” She smiled at Ben, sort of an apology for stealing me away, but if I knew Evie, she was well aware that Ben had stuff to do anyways. “Let’s go. Let’s go!” she sang to me, dragging me towards the dorms.
“Bye, Ben!” I called.
“Bye.”
I stumbled after her, trying to keep up in my heels. Evie was so well adapted to the formal, princess life (mostly because her mother had been teaching her she was royalty since she was a girl) that I looked like peasantry in her presence.
Once we had made it to the dorm rooms, she pulled down the pieces she had made of my dress and had me start fitting sections on.
It was yellow, with blue sequins and accents across the top and down the skirt. Evie had chosen it so that I would match Ben and fit the “Beauty and the Beast” aesthetic of all the events.
Evie began the process of pinning and marking the edges of the dress to be hemmed, where she would close up the back of the dress and tighten the waist. I stood still, my thoughts drifting, as they normally did when Evie forced me up onto her dress stand.
The dress was huge. I couldn’t imagine getting out the door, much less dancing for hours in it. Evie was fairly accommodating to my needs when it came to her designs, but there was also a certain standard that my outfits were expected to meet. I couldn’t just wear anything to a ball like this. Eyes would be on me at all times and I had to look traditional. I had to fit in. The people of Auradon were just jumping for an excuse to make me look bad.
Evie pulled me from my thoughts as she forced my shoulders back, so that the dress would fit me correctly.
I squealed a moment, in shock, but I was cut off when Evie pulled the corset together in back and pinned it there, squeezing my rib cage uncomfortably.
“Okay, Evie? I cannot breathe.”
She stepped around me, going back to her work table. “Well then, you can breathe after Cotillion.” I glared at her and she shrugged. “It won’t stay up unless it’s tight, M.”
“I sincerely doubt that I’ll ever be allowed to breathe again,” I grumbled. “I have at least twenty events directly behind it and I can’t remember what a single one of them is.”
Evie walked around me, pulling out the bottom of the dress to get a good look at it in full.
“Impeccable,” she smiled to herself.
I was glad Evie was getting some sort of satisfaction for her work. I mean, she was constantly designing and sewing dresses now and they always turned out amazing. Everyone was thrilled with her efforts and she was getting paid.
Not to mention, despite all the stress it caused her, especially right now, with the Cotillion so close, she was happy. She loved making dresses for others. It brought her peace and made her feel like she was doing some good for others. And she got to hang out with her new boyfriend, Doug, as she worked.
My eyes drifted away and I noticed my old leather jacket on the coat rack by the door.
I’m not sure why I kept it. I didn’t wear it anymore. Frankly, I couldn’t. My outfits nowadays were kind of expected to reach a level of sophistication. But the two green dragons, twisted into a heart, left a familiar sense of calm.
“Evie?”
“Hm?”
“Do you ever think about what we’d be doing if we were back on the Isle right now?”
I regretted the words the minute they left my mouth.
These dreams I’d been having were unsettling to me. I had read up on reoccuring dreams and how it’s believed they are predicting something. And that terrified me. Not just the empty school and the vandalism and apples, but the fact that my mother was somehow involved in all of it.
“Why do you ask?” she said, seriously.
It was upsetting. Sometimes I felt like everything was going too fast and no one was giving me space. And then the minute I admitted this, I was being babied. My mother had died almost a year ago and still, no one dared mention her name around me.
I just wish I had some time to truly find myself. Once we had abandoned the Isle, the four of us had basically lost any sense of identity we previously had. We were no longer the leader, the thief, the flirt, and the snake.
Evie and Jay had truly found their calling. Evie could practically make a living for herself at this point and Jay was looking into universities to continue playing Tourney at. And Carlos wasn’t completely set yet, but he was relaxed, still messing around with different types of tech and looking after Dude.
I was just trying to survive.
“I’m fine,” I replied, stepping down from the pedestal.
Evie didn’t say anything, turning back towards her work table. I figured she was done at this point and was about to ask her to help me get the dress off when I saw a book on my nightstand, titled The Lady’s Manners.
I gasped rushing over to grab it. I was supposed to run through all of this a week ago, but it had completely slipped my mind. Ben had given it to me to prepare for the Cotillion, seeing as it would be a massively covered event and his parents would be present.
Luckily, my spellbook was also on hand and I had the precise spell for this already marked. “Read it fast, at lightning speed. Remember everything I need,” I recited.
Quickly, I transferred the spell on to the book of manners and began flipping through the pages, running my eyes down the lines to grab any information I could.
“I know Mal’s secret to fitting in and Ben wouldn’t like it one bit,” Evie scolded beside me.
I sent a quick glare in her direction, then continued my skimming.
“Haven’t you guys had enough secrets between the two of you already?”
I rolled my eyes. “What’s the harm, E? These girls around school have had their whole lives to study and learn the ways of a ‘lady’. I’ve had a couple of months. You saw how I was before I started to use magic and it wasn’t good. I was a disaster. I was a shame to Ben and everything his family stands for.”
“You were recovering,” she insisted. “But now, you’ve been talking to therapists, you’re getting your head back on your shoulders, and personally, I strongly believe that this spellbook-” she reached into my lap and took it from me, “-belongs in the museum along with my mirror.”
“Well, it’s hard to act like a person when no one treats you like one,” I grumbled.
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged off the question, changing to subject. “You don’t ever miss running wild?”
“Stealing, and lying, and fighting?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Don’t you miss the freedom of it all?”
“No!” she exclaimed. “M, why would we? Look at us! We’re happy! We’re in Auradon! Where is all of this coming from?”
I shook my head. “Nowhere. Just… wondering.”
“If that’s true,” she answered, briefly squeezing my hand, “then can we please just leave the past in the past?”
I looked into Evie’s eyes as she said that and deeply felt sorry for saying anything. Evie was doing her best to comfort me and make sure that I was alright, but she had some deep scars from the Isle herself. She didn’t want to talk about it unless she had to.
So, I just nodded solemnly.
55 notes · View notes
ladyfluff · 5 years
Text
What He Wanted, Wasn’t His.
AN: I think this might be the end yo!
@acrossyourneck @thatweirdwalangpake @mylovelycrazyworld @mellowgirl01 @little-diva-gurl @wolfsmom1 @drakesfiance @kinghiddlestonanddixon @tarynkauai @kcd15
Part 1: https://ladyfluff.tumblr.com/post/184697943699/what-he-wanted-wasnt-his
Part 2: https://ladyfluff.tumblr.com/post/184722937529/what-he-wanted-wasnt-his
Part 3: This is it
Loki Ending: https://ladyfluff.tumblr.com/post/184773643164/what-he-wanted-wasnt-his
Thor’s Ending: https://ladyfluff.tumblr.com/post/186178764989/what-he-wanted-wasnt-his
CONTAINS SPOILERS TO ENDGAME, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET!
Tumblr media
‘‘I love her but she doesn’t see me...’‘
‘‘Loki-’‘
‘‘All she sees are tricks, a young boy. How am I to be a worthy of her if she doesn’t see the man I am now? What woman would marry a boy?’‘
Loki pressed his lips together and looked back into their mother’s garden, watching her. Both of them were, Thor had entered this competition that felt very rigged. Thor saw the look in his brother’s eyes, he recognised it as being his very own. Loki was to come of age in only a few days time, being the younger brother out of the two though not by much. He was expected to take on more duties as a prince, just like Thor who was busy with the warriors. Loki’s heart was set on Y/N just as Thor’s had been but he was conflicted, does he step on Loki’s toes to go for her or should he let go? Allow her and Loki to find their way together?
‘‘Are you sure that she’s even the one you want? You’ve chased other maidens-’‘
‘‘What’s this then? The mighty Thor pining away for the pretty little songbird? Typical of you, I’m afraid I cannot let you have her...’‘
‘‘Why would she choose you over me anyway? I’m the stronger one-’’
‘’And less mature, Y/N doesn’t belong to anyone but herself...’‘
Loki’s jaw clenched, Thor knew that he was playing a dangerous card. He couldn’t contain it any longer, the many months of listening to Loki’s bleeding heart was getting weary. No one ever listened to him, Loki surely never wanted to hear of his exploits if it wasn’t battle related. Thor stuck his ground, digging his heels into the marble floor. He wanted honesty from his brother, this was to be fair. One of them or none of them was to gain the affections of Y/N but it has to be her that picks, no tricks or lies. Thor wanted an equal match. Loki took a deep breath and sighed, Y/N was standing with their mother. Sharing a laugh as they admired and watered the flowers, Loki chuckled as he observed Y/N’s dress snagging on the thorns of their mother’s infamous rose bush. Many clothes have been torn by that beast, Thor smiled as their mother started to fuss over Y/N asking her to come sit down so they could mend it. 
‘‘She looks lovely in violet...’‘
Thor couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.
Tumblr media
‘‘Foah-’‘
‘‘No, it’s Thor. Can you say Thor?’‘
Narfi hesitated for a moment before grinning and lifting his arms up.
‘‘Foah, up!’‘
Thor simply chuckled and picked up his nephew, holding him closely in his arms as he looked over the ocean front of New Asgard. He’d done good with the settlement, getting his people to safety but was this enough? He didn’t have what it took to be a leader, strength was a good thing to have but he didn’t want to lead anymore. It wasn’t for him, he craved adventure. To do something good for the universe, outside of caring for his nephew and Y/N. Thor looked down to the little town below the hill, he could see Y/N walking through the street and talking to different Asgardians. She seemed happier than before but he knew he could never take her sorrow away for good. She’ll always miss Loki and he felt the same. It wasn’t the same, existing in a world that his brother did not. Yet here he was, standing in one place. Holding his brother’s son, the only piece he had left of Loki must thrive. Live on and grow to be strong, like Loki.
‘‘There you are, Agnes was looking for you.’‘
‘‘Ah, Brunhilde good to see you.’‘
‘‘Brunhilde!’‘
‘‘Of course you can say her name right but not your own uncle’s...’‘
Brunhilde smiled and waved at Narfi who simply waved back, wiggling in Thor’s arms in order to let him know that he wanted down. Thor immediately put him down and Narfi wandered off to the sandbox that was nearby on the hill. Somehow Narfi had the common sense to stay close to his family, where he could be seen. Thor let out a huff and looked at the ocean, Brunhilde patted his back and pressed her lips together.
‘‘You know, I never would’ve thought of Loki as a family man. Throughout our time at Sakaar, I didn’t even know he was married.’‘
‘‘He wasn’t much for airing out his personal affairs, I believe his wife was everything to him. Until she had Narfi that is.’’
Thor looked back to Narfi who was quick to dig himself a whole, quite proud of it infact. He smiled as his nephew now pretended to be a beast of sorts, digging through the sand with his hands. Y/N wasn’t going to be happy with the amount of sand in Narfi’s hair. Brunhilde’s gaze followed Thor’s, smiling at Narfi. It was fairly obvious as to how much his nephew meant to him, he loved Narfi as if he were his own but he knew he had to be careful with him. Thor didn’t want to become a replacement, just thinking about it made him sick somehow. He had thought about it, potentially see if there was still a chance for him with Y/N but every time the idea made it’s way into his head. He couldn’t help but block himself from continuing it, fantasies he had plenty. Over the years they’ve become all he had left, his dreams made him feel content. Being Y/N’s friend made him feel happy, that she appreciates him and his help but that’s all there was for them. Friendship, relation through marriage. Brother in-law and uncle to her child, Thor accepted whatever he got. It was time for him to move on.
‘‘It’s funny how one woman somehow managed to bring me and Loki together and tear us a part. Me and Loki once fought over holding the door open for her, taking turns each time- Loki he uh- He brought Y/N flowers once but failed to mention that it was I who painstakingly picked them. That damned rose bush, thorns....’‘
‘‘You’re in love with her then?’‘
‘‘For years, the one thing I wanted more than a throne. I believed I would’ve made a better husband than king.’‘
‘‘You’ve done a pretty good job of being king, everyone in New Asgard is happy.’‘
Thor gave her a nod, acknowledging the things he’d done to help his people. He needed a new start, he did what he could. 
‘‘Well, maybe they need a new king...’‘
He looked at Brunhilde with a smile, gently pushing her shoulder with his fist. She smiled and shook her head, she knew that he wasn’t going to stay. Thor wanted to travel the galaxy, he wanted to do something more with his life than sit around and cry over how the love of his life never gave him a chance. He wasn’t going to feel sorry for himself, his downfall had strengthen him. Made him see what was important, Y/N still believed Loki to be alive. That he was out there somewhere, he wanted to find him if he truly was out there. Thor pressed his lips together and called out for Narfi as he prepared to take him back down to the village. He had some goodbyes to make, some rules to give out before he handed it over to Brunhilde.
Tumblr media
‘‘Y/N is going to kill you-’‘
‘’You will not speak of my wife to me, you know better than that brother...’‘
‘‘Loki-’‘
‘‘Hold on! Rock of ages, is married? Now who would ever want to take a ride on that thing?’‘
Loki’s eyes narrowed at Stark, clearly displeased but Thor was a little too entertained. He liked Stark, he’s funny but obviously his brother didn’t think he was all that funny. 
‘‘Speak not of my wife in such unsavoury tone lest you want me to tear off your miserable excuse for a-’’
Before he managed to finish that sentence, Thor simply muzzled him. Like one would a hound, Loki growled intensely. Obviously wanting to finish his threat to the man of iron, Thor was understanding. It wasn’t exactly courteous of Stark to talk about Y/N in that way but what could he do? He wasn’t allowed to speak of his affections for her in front of Loki, the brothers had long time ago agreed to that. In fact, on Loki’s wedding day he had told Thor that he didn’t wish to hear of Thor’s love for her. Seeing as Y/N’s heart belonged to him, as his brother Thor had to support him and his marriage which Thor agreed too. He loved his brother to the moon and back, they were brothers though Loki had a hard time agreeing to that fact. After having found out of his origin, they were at odds now
‘’Is she a looker? She’s cute isn’t she?’’
Stark wiggled his finger in Loki’s face. Thor noticed the way his eyes lit up for a moment, he was smiling behind the muzzle. If it weren’t for the sweat they had worked up in that fight, Thor could’ve sworn he had seen his face reddening ever so slightly. Y/N managed to capture both of their eyes, safe to say she was more than just cute. Thor was very certain that she was going to teach Loki a lesson, he smiled as he imagined Loki sleeping in the stables for the next hundred years.
Tumblr media
Thor gently closed the door to Narfi’s room, making sure to leave it a jar for the little beam of light that comforted him to shine through. Narfi was insisted on Thor telling him a story, what better story to tell than the time Narfi’s father turned himself into a bull and couldn’t turn himself back for three days. It had been quite the embarrassment, they had been mere children when it happened. Loki had been very eager to impress his mother and Y/N that he had finally mastered the art of shifting, which he hadn’t. Thor’s smile dropped when he saw Y/N sitting in the small kitchen area, she lived a few houses away from his little hovel. Still not accustomed to the whole midgardian life, having to do things herself. Thor made sure that Brunhilde would have her covered while he was gone. 
‘‘Thank you, he wouldn’t go to sleep without seeing you first.’‘
‘‘It’s alright, he’s a good boy.’‘
‘‘He is...’‘
A silence came over the two of them, Y/N stood up and wrapped her arms around Thor’s torso. He really wished he hadn’t let himself go but he simply chuckled and wrapped his arms around her. Relishing this moment that he would replay on loop in his dreams, his heart may not allow himself to pursue her but it would allow him to think fondly of her. As he has done for the past 500 years. Y/N parted from him and wiped the tears from her eyes, she knew he was leaving. It was sweet of her to ask him to stay but he had to be on his way, Quill wouldn’t wait around forever. Neither would Loki, if he truly was out there.
‘‘Thor, I-’‘
‘‘For years I have loved you, it’s hard to imagine what my life would’ve been like had I never seen you for the woman you are. Loki was right to marry you.’‘
Y/N’s eyes widened, unable to say a word. Not that Thor intended to let her.
‘‘He once was afraid that you’d never see him, that you’d only look at him as the boy he used to be. For years I have been putting up a fight for no reason but now I know why I’m fighting. I promised Loki- I promised him I would never go behind him, I’m currently breaking that oath to say this.’‘
‘‘Thor-’‘
‘‘I love you and I always will, you believe Loki is out there somewhere and so I’m going to find him. I will find him...’‘
Thor took Y/N’s hands in his own, squeezing them with all the reassurance he had that he would find him one day. If she believed him to be alive somewhere, he had a feeling that she couldn’t be wrong. Maybe not in this world but the next, he’ll find him and he’ll bring him home. Thor pressed his forehead against hers for a moment, his eyes closed. He had seen the future, a future which wasn’t happy. He’d eventually marry her, raise Narfi with her but she would never be the same. The love she had for Loki would not be as strong as her love for him. This wasn’t a future he wanted, he wasn’t going to force it upon her. Though the thought of those golden haired children enticed him so, he simply couldn’t. She rejected him once, who’s to say she wouldn’t do it again.
‘‘He wanted me to protect you when he wasn’t there, I lost you once. Loki would put that dagger of his through my shoulder for that-’‘
She gave Thor a broken laugh, the tears gathering in her eyes. The feel of her skin against his own was his to remember.
‘‘Brunhilde will look after you while I’m gone, Korg will be here- You won’t have to be afraid.’‘
‘‘But I am afraid, what if New Asgard is attacked and you’re not here-’‘
‘‘She knows what to do, all you need is to protect your son. His son...’‘
Thor boldly leaned down, pressed his lips against hers. She didn’t pull away but neither did she kiss him back, he smiled and pulled away before summoning Stormbreaker to his hand. He backed away from her and turned around to leave, the rain pounding on the roof and the sound of the ocean crashing into the harbour. She would be safe here, until he comes back she would be safe.
‘‘Tell him of Loki, make sure Narfi knows how great he was...’‘
‘‘Be safe.’‘
‘‘I’m Thor, safe isn’t exactly what I do.’‘
He gave her a smile before rushing out through the door and flying away with Stormbreaker, leaving New Asgard behind.
For now.
Tumblr media
236 notes · View notes
mrmissmrsrandom · 5 years
Text
Lan Sizhui Birthday Event Prompt- Lan Sizhui Never Forgets
Joint meta/fanfic of @mwritesink and mine’s “Reversal AU” idea, told from Sizhui’s perspective of events. As this prompt suggests, this AU has spoilers for the entire novel. 
Lan Wangji attends the siege of the Burial Mounds, and stands in front of the army, fighting them in defense of Wei Wuxian and the remainders of the Wen Sect, and is killed. His defense of Burial Mounds gives the rest of the defenders time to assist Wei Wuxian’s destruction of part of the Stygian Tiger Amulet. However, the power of the amulet now destroys and scatters the bodies of those in the Wen Sect, while Wei Wuxian is knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, he finds Wen Yuan where he had been hidden by his grandmother. They are both feverish, and half-dead, but Wuxian can still move his legs and gets them out of the Burial Mounds before the sacking can commence.
They are protected by supernatural forces that not even Wuxian fully understands (which is actually Lan Wangi’s spirit. He guides them to shelter, to clean water, to food, etc, until Wuxian regains his wits about him). It is a long process and most nights he doesn’t sleep, watching over Wen Yuan and playing a song on his flute, and rethinking how to live his life better for the little one he is now fully entrusted to.
When he wakes up, Yuan cries. He misses his grandmother, he misses his aunties and uncles, he wants to play with the toys “Brother Rich” bought for him. He is so tired. Wei Wuxian holds him close, promising that he will see them all again, many years from now after he lives a long and full life. But Wei Wuxian, even with resentful energy coursing through his veins, still remembers little things, and tells them to Yuan as he falls asleep, reminding him of those who loved him even if they are no longer with him.
It takes weeks of traveling, and three days to climb to the summit, but with Yuan on his back, Wuxian reaches the summit of Baoshan Sanren’s mountain and asks in honor of his mother for protection for him and the child.
Baoshan Sanren remarks, “I have heard of what has happened to you, Wei Wuxian. Even from my seclusion. You are beyond my help, and will never grow a golden core again.”
Wuxian replied, “Elder, that is not my intention. I come here not for my own will, but for his.”
“I can raise the child. He can still walk the righteous path with my other students on this mountain. You can leave him here in safety.” “I cannot leave him, Elder. Not when so many have given their lives to protect his and mine.”
“...Hm. You look far too much like the dead you keep at your beck and call. You may stay here, then. Perhaps you will die before too long.”
But Wuxian does not die. And Yuan is raised not only by Wuxian, but another Grandmother, and other aunties and uncles. One, Uncle Xingchen, leaves the mountain when Yuan is 6.
The day after Uncle Xingchen leaves, Grandmother Baoshan begins to teach him how to cultivate.
In their small hut in the evenings, Wuxian also teaches parts of his own cultivation. Small things- not how to control bodies, but how to talk and ease dying plants and animals as they go to sleep. Yuan cries sometimes afterward, and Wuxian takes him into his arms and soothes him. Even after being surrounded by death since birth, these lessons are the first time he truly understands death. He learns how to respect it, just as he learns to respect the rules of Grandmother Baoshan.
When Yuan is 8, he brings up a very important question to Wuxian: “Why can’t I call you father all the time?” While Wuxian instructed Yuan to call him father around other people, he had never insisted on the title when they were alone. It didn’t make sense to Yuan that the man that loves him and takes care of him is only his father part of the time. On his 9th birthday, Wuxian gives Yuan his courtesy name, Wei Sizhui - with Sizhui written as “To Recollect or Long For” - but Yuan gives Wuxian the name of “Father”.
Uncle Xingchen eventually comes back, with his friend Song Lan, begging for Baoshan to heal Song Lan’s blindness. Baoshan says he should not have come back, but Uncle Xingchen goes on his knees and promises he will give anything, and then he will leave. Wei Sizhui watches beside Baoshan Sanren, too shocked to interfere.
“Are you willing to give anything?” Xingchen replies without hesitation.
“Then you must give him your own eyes, my star. I know how to make the transfer, but it will be painful, and his curse will pass on to you for the rest of your days. Are you willing to do so knowing this?”
Xingchen once more, answers without hesitation.
Wei Sizhui is 9 and assists Baoshan with the operation. He feels sick to his stomach, but his hands are steady, even when Xingchen screams. Wei Sizhui goes back to his father that day shaken to the tentative core he is beginning to form within himself, but he does not cry. He remembers members of his family were once healers, and he hopes he made them proud.
After the necessary time for recovery passes, Xingchen tells him that he will honor his previous promise to Baoshan that once he left the mountain he would never return, and asked her to please look after his dearest friend. He would make the descent the next morning.
When Sizhui tells his father this, Wuxian asks him if Sizhui wants Xingchen to go alone, and Sizhui says no. Wuxian agrees.
They go to Baoshan together and tell her of their plans. Baoshan feels remorse, to lose her previous pupil, and one just starting to blossom under her tutelage, but she consents. She tells Sizhui they will not meet again in this life.
Sizhui does not cry. He is at peace, glad now that this time he can say goodbye. “Then until the next life, Teacher.”
Uncle Xingchen objects at first, wishing to go on this path alone, but father smacks his back good-naturedly. “Martial Uncle Xiao, do you really think the path to redemption is one only you can walk?” He reaches to tuck back a lock of his hair, now peppered with gray, even though his face still looks young. “Unlike the previous paths I’ve taken, its a road open and wide enough for us all. Besides, A-Yuan is going to need a teacher, and my theory can only get him so far as a cultivator!”
Despite some brusque words, he allows them to follow, and Uncle Xingchen becomes Sizhui’s new teacher. The trio of them travel, with Xingchen going on Night Hunts to make money, and Wuxian and Sizhui making sure that Xingchen was not taken advantage of. However, his father in public goes simply by Sanren when asked. Sizhui finds he loves the wide open world, and in every town they pass learns something new.
One day, Xingchen was fed up by what he thought to be his father “babying him,” and went to the market on his own. He came back with someone. That was the day Wei Sizhui met his martial sister, A-Qing.
A-Qing was older than Sizhui by a few years and survived by acting the blind beggar child enough to steal from the pockets of rich and lecherous old men. She had made it an art and even tried to continue to play that part in front of his father. It took a few days, but his father figured it out. However, instead of being sent away, Uncle Xingchen asked if she wished to learn cultivation under his tutelage. A-Qing agreed.
At first, A-Qing looked at Sizhui the similar way that she looked at the rest of the world save for Unlce Xingchen, or “Daozhang,” as she called him: with wariness, and veiled hostility. Sizhui could not get mad at her for that. At least he had Father, and his aunts and uncles on Baoshan Sanren’s mountain. A-Qing had no one. Over the months traveling together and learning together, A-Qing slowly accepts his existence, and slowly seems to welcome it. Sizhui changes from “you,” to “Sizhui,” to “little brother.” A-Qing begins to insist that he calls her martial sister, and he happily does.
He doesn’t understand the sadness in his father’s eyes when he does, but then again, he has learned that his father sometimes holds sadness in him that never goes away. When it gets to be too much, he plays that song on his flute again, and sometimes when he listens, Sizhui thinks he can hear the strings of a guqin accompany it.
A-Qing and Sizhui begin to accompany Xingchen on Night Hunts, and grow into exceptional cultivators in their own right. It is one such night that Sizhui meets another boy, dressed in gold and shining in the darkness compared to Sizhui’s own white, gray, and black robes. But he also still looks too young to be out on Night Hunts. He offers his aid in taking down the creature, but the other boy refuses, until they are both cornered by the creature, and must work together to defeat it.
Afterward, the boy in gold looks at him as if Sizhui is also become possessed, before throwing his head back and laughing. Sizhui will remember that expression for many years, and the sound of a child laughing who hadn’t laughed in a very long time. His own laughter quickly followed. This was how he met Jin Ling… who would later be called “A-Ling,” though not for years yet.
It is during these years that they hear whispers of an entire clan slaughtered, and Xingchen has an ill feeling at how familiar this sounds. The methods used in the massacre drain what color can collect on his father’s pale face. They traveled to Shudong, a land of many rivers and valleys covered in mists, yet it didn’t so easily conceal the blood trail that they followed.
That was the first, and last, time Sizhui met a man called Xue Yang. His father sent him and A-Qing away once they captured him, but Sizhui can remember the look of pure loathing illuminated in the man’s eyes despite his toothy grin. He also heard his final words, screaming out for Daozhang, for Uncle Xingchen.
When his father and uncle returned hours later, robes covered in dirt after burying the body, and Xingchen’s bandages bleeding through, he decided it not to ask why Xue Yang called out for him. Instead, he focuses on his father’s words: the news that Uncle Ning was not burned to ash.
Though Sizhui helped in planning the infiltration of Koi Tower to free Wen Ning, he was kept back from the actual mission. To a certain extent, he’s frustrated that his father would keep his back, but he also knows that the more people enacting a plan as delicate as this, the more chances things had to go wrong.
Of course, this is his father, so things nearly go wrong anyway. Sizhui is vibrating in his hiding place when the bushes on the ground part around figures coming into the clearing. Two move slowly, while the last has his father’s familiar gait. The first look Sizhui has of his missing and thought-dusted uncle, is not what he wanted.
Wen Ning in the flesh was not the sweet but troubled young man from his father’s stories, the first, and so far only, Fierce Corpse with his own consciousness. He was shambling forward, with no expression, and didn’t seem to process anything outside of the songs from Wuxian’s flute.
Sizhui thought he was going to be sick, right then and there. It was all he could do to plant his feet and wait it out. Watching father take out the nails from Wen Ning’s head was the worst part. Wen Ning opened his mouth in a silent scream and his eyes flickered between blankness and what could only be described as pain. But once they’re out, there was nothing that could have stopped Sizhui from flinging himself into his uncle’s arms. Distant as it is, it’s something from the past their family thought was completely destroyed, and is still standing there before them, healing if not whole.
The extra person that his father “kidnapped” with Uncle Ning was interesting. Mo Xuanyu was full of mysteries, but blunt and straightforward. Sizhui couldn’t help but try to peel story after story out of him about Koi Tower, about his research, about how he developed his Resentful Strings technique, anything that Mo Xuanyu could be convinced to talk about. It takes a lot of convincing. Navigating the pit traps in Xuanyu’s mind are the hard part, but so many of them are the same as Sizhui’s father’s that he becomes instrumental in helping the man get out of his defensive shell.
After the little group is able to clear his father’s name, their chosen family gets named as the “Wei Sect” recognized by the other landed sects as their own entity, open to any who wish to learn and are willing to work hard for their keep. Sizhui is, of course, named as heir, and in due time becomes one of the leading cultivators of his generation along with Jin Ling and Lan Jingyi.
53 notes · View notes
Text
Moon neglected and beat his own children. How did it affect them?
Tumblr media
Hyo Jin Moon: “I know my Father. He made me, so we are just like each other. We can kill one another.”  
At Pledge Service, November 1994 at Belvedere (video link below)
Shamanism in the Unification Church While church members generally consider themselves to be Christian, the church’s rituals and practices share much with Korean shamanism. Practices such as ancestor veneration / liberation from evil spirits, spiritual channeling, sacrifices, songs, drumming, rhythmic movements and beatings are all common in Korean shamanism and culture.
The Master Speaks These questions and answers have been transcribed from tapes made during our Leader’s sessions with members and guests at Centers throughout the United States during his trip in March and April 1965.
Question: Should we keep our physical children with us?
Sun Myung Moon: Yes, of course. You cannot leave them on the street. You must protect them. If they do not obey you, you can even strike them. In the satanic world, if you beat children it is from your temper and is sin. But now you know the absolute good, and if they do not obey you can bring them by force. It will be good for them after all. In our group, some people have neglected their children and devoted themselves completely to witnessing. This has happened because, if you are not restored, your children will perish automatically. If you don’t find three spiritual children, how can your physical children benefit? In that sense, your problem is more urgent. For this reason, some parents have neglected their children. After they are blessed they ... and take them back.
Sun Myung Moon: “From today on, if you meet anybody around you who criticizes or judges True Family because of what is happening right now, you can hit them in the mouth. If anyone writes a wrong letter to True Family you can break their arm.”  February 24, 1996, Sao Paolo, Brazil
Sun Myung Moon: “Your mission is only the territory of your relatives. How much easier it is for you compared to True Father’s course. You have absolutely no excuse. Those who have the confidence to fulfill your mission of accomplishing 3.6 [million] couples Blessing this year, show your hands. (Applause) Father wants Reverend Kwak to keep a baseball bat in his hand all the time and if he sees anyone neglecting their mission in this regard then he can freely use it. Particularly those who are sleeping and hiding, Reverend Kwak’s baseball bat will fall upon you at any time.”  February 13, 1997, New Yorker Hotel, New York
Hyun Jin Preston Moon interviewed in September 2010
Question: Do you have any episodes you remember while fishing with your father? Preston: “When I was a teenager, I remember fishing with my father one day on the cold Alaskan sea. I was in an accident. While my father was focused on fishing with other people at the stern of a small boat, I was fishing at the front of the boat and fell into the sea. The water temperature of the Alaskan sea is so cold that most people die from a heart attack after about 15 minutes in the water. But nobody noticed that I had fallen overboard! I tied the thick fishing line used for catching King Salmons around my arm and desperately moved toward the boat, barely surviving. At that time, my father continued fishing without batting an eye. I was shivering with cold but he kept me with him for the rest of the fishing trip and then we returned back to the harbor.”
Question: He was very strict in how he raised you. Preston: “(Laughter) Such training from my father made me who I am today. My father wanted his children to become better than him and wanted them to grow through challenges.”Trained during his youth on the rough sea, today when Hyun Jin Moon goes to the Alaska mountains to hunt, he will stay there for one or two weeks. Sometimes the guide becomes exhausted and goes back early. In the deep mountains, after hitting the target, he skins the animal himself, carves the meat and puts it all into his backpack. Then with a heavy load, he gladly completes the tough journey back that could cover several miles.”
Hyung Jin Sean Moon: “You know Father, he would slap me. Not only slap, he would smack me every day. Punch me. You know, he would smack these guys all the time. You know, and these guys took it every day… These guys have to be like ironman, they have to be superhuman, iron butt training. So don’t criticize them so quickly and easily. That’s not a sign of maturity… I saw them get smacked so many times… We got the most beatings.”  September 23, 2012, New York
In Jin Tatiana Moon (extract from Nansook Hong’s book, In The Shadow Of The Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family, page 101) “In Jin disapproved of my friendship with her sister [Un Jin] but she could be nice to me herself when it suited her purpose. She came to me once, asking to borrow some clothes so she could sneak out that night. Her own room was next to her parents’ suite in the mansion and she did not want to risk running into Father. Why not? I asked. She told me that recently she had come into her room on tiptoe about 4:00 A.M. It was still dark. She thought she was in the clear, when she saw Father’s shadow in a chair across the room.
As Sun Myung Moon struck her over and over again, his daughter told me, he insisted he was hitting her out of love. It was not her first beating at Father’s hands. She said she wished she had the courage to go to the police and have Sun Myung Moon arrested for child abuse. I lent her my best blue jeans and a white angora sweater and tried to hide how shocked I was by her story.
As much as anything about my new life in the True Family, the antipathy between the Moon children and their parents stunned me. Early on, I was disabused of the idea that this was a warm and loving family.”
Tumblr media
In Jin Tatiana Moon spoke in 2014: 5:15 “So …as angry as my father was for the first ten years that I lived up in Boston. He would scream at me for 3 or 4 hours every time I came back home to wish him happy birthday, or to wish him happy God’s Day. You know, Father was extremely angry.  In a way I am hoping that my marriage, and the dissolution of my marriage thereafter, can be a good example of what not to do to our kids, and what not to do to the future blessed couples that aren’t …
“Forcing people into marriage is not right. Political marriages is not right, you know. What I’ve been pushed to do which is really simply nothing other than institutional rape is not right. With two people standing outside your door because they’re afraid you’re going to run away. That is not right. And not wanting to deal with the consequences of your actions of forcing two people into marriage is not right. And not having support and not being nurturing while your child is trying to deal with what you crammed down their throat is not right either…
7:00 “Shocking as it was for my mother to hear my story, the last 30 years of marriage which I have never spoken to her about. You know, she had to learn too. A lot of people think that, well In Jin was just acting on her own behalf and she is just doing whatever she wants. No, I am not doing whatever I want…”  LINK
In the early 1980’s there was a gym at East Garden where a martial arts expert came to teach karate to the older sons. One day Hak Ja Han came there when Heung Jin, Kook Jin and Hyun Jin were training. She said “Let two of them fight until they are bloody.” The martial arts teacher was not happy about this and resigned shortly afterwards.
Nansook Hong and Un Jin Moon were both beaten by their husbands: VIDEO of them being interviewed on ‘60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace: “Whenever she told Rev. and Mrs Moon about the beatings, Nansook says, they blamed her.” Nansook Hong: “I was not ideal wife for Hyo Jin that is why he would behave in a certain way towards me, and I was not a good member of their family… so also it was my fate…” MW: “Who told you that? Mrs Moon or …” NSH: “Both, both of them, yes. And it was my fate that I have to endure these things.” Un Jin Moon: “Sounds familiar” MW: “Nansook is getting support from a surprising source, one of Rev. Moon’s daughters, Un Jin Moon. She told me her parents blamed her too when she was abused by her husband [Jin-hun Park, son of ‘Tiger’ Park]. MW: Did he beat you?” UJM: “Yes” MW: “And you would tell your folks?” UJM: “Yes” MW: “And they would say…” UJM: “I deserved it” MW: “Un Jin Moon is estranged from her parents, but she has never criticized them in public before. …” [Apparently Jin-hun Park used to drink.]
Nansook Hong: “Sun Myung Moon seemed to take pleasure in the reports that filtered back to East Garden of the beatings being administered by the Black Heung Jin. He would laugh raucously if someone out of favor had been dealt an especially hard blow.” (pages 150-153)
MLP: “Having grown up around them, I can confirm that when the Moons wanted something, it was there. Thus, they learned to take and only to take. They learned to brow beat, insult, demean and ultimately to physically intimidate those around them. But they never learned to give and never learned basic empathy for those that provided them all their untold wealth.”
Sam Park: “My mother’s involvement with Rev. Moon started in 1953 when, at the age of 17 years old, he forced himself upon her and took her virginity. At the time [pause] my father said that because my mother was destined to be his eternal bride or the “True Mother” in UC parlance, he had to have sexual relations with her to reverse what the … Forgive me because I am going to bring up UC / Moonie terms. Some of you might know it if you follow the church, but a lot of you won’t – just indulge me because there are a lot of Unificationists out there who may see this and it will probably help them. My father said to my mother that – he basically raped her – that he had to have sexual relations with her to reverse what the Archangel Lucifer did to the young Eve. Rev. Moon taught that the biblical Eve was seduced by the Archangel Lucifer when she was 17 years old which was the real reason for the Fall of Man as described in the Bible. That is how Moonies think about the Fall of Man.” LINK
It has been rumored that Won-pil Kim was beaten up by Sun Myung Moon and hospitalized… Moon was rumored to have used a baseball bat at leader’s meetings at East Garden and in Korea. There are rumors of Moon violence at meetings in Alaska. There are many witnesses, but they are keeping quiet. Perhaps that explains some of Moon’s power over his minions.
Young-oon Kim: Washington, D.C.  After dinner Miss Kim began to speak: “Our Leader might be coming… If our preparation is not adequate it will take many years to clear from his mind our laxity. Our preparation must be thorough. Some of us remember his last visit when some were not completely prepared. We remember his anger at that time. If he comes and sees lack of preparation this time, his anger will be much greater and much longer-lasting.” New Age Frontiers  June 1967    pages 14 and 15    LINK
Nansook Hong: In 1992 she went on a fundraising trip to Japan with the True Mother. Before the return journey, she says: “I was given $20,000 in two packs of crisp new bills. I hid them beneath the tray in my make-up case. I knew that smuggling was illegal, but I believed that the followers of Sun Myung Moon answered to higher laws.” Much of the Moon money was given to Hyo Jin to fuel his cocaine and alcohol binges.  pages 171-175
Hyo Jin, she says, would frequently beat her. “I once tried to flush his cocaine down the toilet. He beat me so severely I thought he would kill the baby in my womb. He made me sweep up the spilled white powder from the bathroom floor even as he continued to beat me. Later Hyo Jin would offer a religious justification for beating half-senseless a woman seven months pregnant. He was teaching me to be humble in the presence of the son of the Messiah.” Her children, she says, were her only reason to live. “My main goal was to raise them decently.” Her children would ask her: “Why do we have a bad dad?”” pages 180, 184 and elsewhere
Here is another description of Hyo Jin Moon: “Most of what I’ve been told comes from people who were around him earlier, like Floyd Christofferson at the Manhattan Center studios, Leon Harris who used to watch his back when he went into the bad parts of town to buy cocaine, and others. He injured a friend of mine with a karate kick to the ribs in the New Yorker in the late 80s, he beat up another student at UTS, he smacked Ben Lorentzen around when he first went to work with him in the studio, he beat up second gens who I could name because I know their parents, he held a loaded handgun to Peter Kim’s head at East Garden and threatened to pull the trigger, he shot up a passing freight train with an automatic weapon, and he threatened to kill numerous other people including Nansook (and her unborn child)…
At a meeting in Kodiak in 1986 Hyo Jin assaulted Joachim Becker who was in his 40s. Hyo Jin got up from his seat, flung the older church brother on to the ground and hit him in the ribs. You could literally hear his ribs crack. The bewildered brother lay on the ground wheezing and clutching the side of his rib cage. Needless to say the meeting ended abruptly. Later Joachim went to the hospital and had a wrap around beige bandage wrapped around his chest to mend a few of his fractured ribs.
Those are just some examples of his out-of-control behaviour. I have good friends who worked on the ground staff at Belvedere and East Garden who used to hide when he was in the vicinity, in case he was coked up and in a bad mood. Security staff were on duty to keep an eye on Nansook when he went into one of his periodic rages. It was True Father himself who said that Satan walked in and out of Hyo Jin freely. Yet there was no direct intervention to get him into rehab when all the indicators were there, and he wasn’t taken out of position until the damage was done. Nor did he get sent to Cheongpyeong to have his evil spirits removed like ordinary mortals.
These were all eye-witness reports from people who were around him daily. And this pattern of misbehaviour persisted from his teens, when he was expelled from Hackley High for shooting at other students with a BB gun, until Nansook called time on their marriage because she realised she might end up dead, or one of their kids might die in an accident while handling one of the sixty or more guns that he kept unsecured about the old house at East Garden, which included a cache under the bed in the master bedroom, some loaded and some of those with the safety off.” LINK
Tumblr media
Hak Ja Han wants followers to venerate Hyo Jin Moon who had many serious and well-known problems. Here his photo is seen on the altar in the main prayer hall at Cheongpyeong. Hak Ja Han also holds an annual music festival in honor of Hyo Jin.
It was 1989. The BCs used to gather every Sunday in Tarrytown. We loved being together. If Hyo Jin hyungnim was around we would follow him around and do whatever he wanted to do. He had a volatile temper and was often abusive but we were told that it was because we didn’t understand his and God’s heart. He was teaching us God’s heart. One day he had us lined up and he started raving and ranting waving his gun. Suddenly he stopped. We had our heads bowed but I looked up. He had his gun pointed at Jin Seung Eu’s head and pulled the trigger. The bullet went into the wall behind Jin Seung Eu, 2 inches from his head.  LINK
Hyo Jin was allowed to get away with his abusive behavior because there was no oversight and nobody but Reverend Moon himself had the authority to stop him. This was the type of dysfunctional and nepotistic system that Moon himself had set up.  LINK
VIDEO  Sunday November 1994 at 5am at Belvedere 0:05  Let’s welcome Hyo Jin Hyo Jin, the oldest son, is taking the place of his father this Sunday 0:40  Do you respect me? Fuck you!!! You don’t know me. … Don’t stop because I will kill you. I … Father and Mother and they know that …. miserable and I’m miserable. 1:44  “I know my Father. He made me, so we are just like each other. We can kill one another.” 3:26 “I don’t like this place, you know. I am standing here being judged by you motherfuckers. What the fuck do you judge me by?”
Hyo Jin Moon is rumored to have held a loaded handgun to Peter Kim’s head at East Garden and threatened to pull the trigger. Why?
Donna Orme Collins: “As I grew older, I witnessed frightening pre-marriage ceremonies in which the bride and groom-to-be beat each other with bats to rid themselves of evil. I had also learned that the lives of Moon’s followers were utterly controlled by him – and that he was the parent I was supposed to rely on.” LINK
Sun Myung Moon bullied Second Gen teenagers in New York
Testimony of a participant at Moon’s July 18, 2011 event in Nigeria: “I saw something I shouldn’t have seen during Hoondokhoe on the 18th July. Maybe Father sensed that the spiritual standard was not good enough, or for whatever reason it may have been, True Father slapped Hyung Jin Nim in his face in front of all the members. And after that he slapped Yeon Ah Nim, Hyung Jin Nim’s wife, in the face too. A very sudden unexpected situation. After that Father continued talking for 2 hours, but the African members were shocked to the core by what they had just witnessed. Some thought that Hyung Jin Nim’s couple paid indemnity for the failure of the members to properly attend True Parents.”
Mariah Blake: “Speaking on the Senate floor in July 1993, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) urged fellow lawmakers to celebrate True Parents Day—a holiday honoring the Moons—in the name of family values. “It is in the interest of society and government to adopt policies strengthening and sustaining fathers and mothers,” he said. The following year, Congress passed a bill designating Parents Day a national holiday.
While lawmakers were lauding Moon’s family values message, his own family was unraveling. In 1998, his ex-daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, published a devastating expose of Moon family life, which claimed that her husband, Steve, blew huge sums of church money on cocaine and beat her during her pregnancy. Hong and Moon’s estranged daughter, Un Jin, went on 60 Minutes, where they presented a litany of allegations about drugs, sex, and corruption inside Moon’s church. They also disclosed that Moon had an illegitimate son named ‘Sammy.’”  from Mother Jones (November 2013)  LINK
Extra-Sacramental Rituals of the Family Federation for World Peace After the Blessing ceremony, for the First Generation there is an “Indemnity Stick ceremony” where the couples all have to beat their spouse’s buttocks as hard as they can with a baseball bat or a heavy stick. The purpose of this is to pay a price for the sin of Adam and Eve by hitting the sexual area. It is also meant as the one time a couple is allowed to physically assault one another, after which all disputes should be settled verbally. This ceremony is public, and is not a private experience. Members have been hospitalized with spinal injuries because of this ceremony. LINK
An open letter to In Jin Moon and the Unification Church By Thomas Cromwell    September 13, 2012
The Incident at the New Yorker Hotel: Hyun Jin stopped talking – there was a familiar uncomfortable silence…
Hyun Jin Moon’s assault on Tim Folzenlogen
Kook Jin Moon – an elder American second generation: “Later on, there was the fight club. It was [Kook Jin] Justin’s idea and he held sessions at his parents’ compound in Seoul. “There were five or six of us, and we’d fight without gloves until we were bloody,” Porter says. Justin officiated and fought, but he didn’t always play by the rules. As one fight was starting, he unleashed a head kick. “This guy Isaac was just waiting for the fight to begin, and Justin leaped up and did this crazy swinging kick,” Porter remembers. “It landed in the guy’s face, and it looked like the guy was airborne forever, like he was levitating, until he finally dropped to the floor. It was cool. But it wasn’t an emotional thing with [Justin]. He was very calculated about his violence. He had to be the best.” Portfolio magazine LINK
Hyung Jin Moon (August 7, 2016) 1:20:50 [Probably late 2012 or early 2013] “Literally when she screamed at us, and we have shared it now, when she screamed, when we were having that conversation in the TV room of the Palace, in the inner chambers of the Palace, and when Kook Jin said: “You have to be like the Queen Mother and honor the decision of True Father.” She blew up and said: “I have absolute power” with her eyes bugging out and her face red. Both of us looked like … and we looked at each other [thinking] “Are you seeing this?, Are you seeing this?”” “Han Mother did an occult ritual … She has become a pagan.”
Sun Myung Moon (May 17, 1973, USA)
“Good morning! Sit down! I am going to speak about the significance of a training session like this….
In your own way, you can organize your lecture. In order for you to be a dynamic lecturer, you must know the knack of holding and possessing the listeners’ hearts. If there appears a crack in the man’s personality, you wedge in a chisel, and split the person apart. For the first few lectures, you will just memorize. But after that, you will study the character of your audience, and adapt your lecture. If he is a scientist, you will approach him differently than a commercial man, artist, etc. The audience as a whole will have a nature, and you must be flexible.”   LINK
The ‘True Father’ who could not forgive: “I haven’t been able to release my grudge towards Japanese people yet.” November 2011
Compare life in the Moon family with the teachings of Jesus: Six Surprising Ways Jesus Changed The World
The seven deadly sins of narcissism
Sun Myung Moon was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002
The Unification Church and Shamanism
How “God’s Day” was established in 1968
The FFWPU is unequivocally not Christian
1 note · View note
tgwltw · 6 years
Text
Start of something.
Tumblr media
Technically I wasn’t supposed to post the previous one that was about Dick, mainly because I wanted to queue a few posts so that tumblr can just post sporadically over the next few days but what’s done is done. A few papers left until I can enjoy my winter break. 
Thank you for sending this in! I think I got too carried away writing about Lian but I think this is literally the first time I have ever written her and Roy deserves more love too! Might even consider writing a sequel to this but we shall see! As usual, there are mistakes here and there but I hope you will still enjoy reading this.
Thinking about the long weekend ahead of you, you are rather eager to go home to your comfortable bed and your abundant books that you have unfortunately no time to read yet due to your job. Who knew being an elementary teacher took a lot of your time? Although, despite everything, your kids still make you very happy. After making sure you have all of their art projects – the theme for this month is ‘my dream’ – with you so you can mark them over the weekend, you locked your office and pad towards the exit. You really cannot wait to get home!
Your eager steps falter when your eyes land on a very familiar girl playing by herself on the swings. This seems very oddly cliché too – like a scene from one of those books you often read but you definitely cannot leave her alone. So you approach her, making sure to make a small noise at the back of your throat as to not surprise the young girl.
Lian turns around and a grin appears on her face. “Teacher!” She jumps down from the swings to grin up at you and you giggle at how adorable she is. You pat her on the head. Her eyes land on your bag and the smile drops from her face. “Are you leaving now?”
You shake your head as you crouch down beside her. “Where is your Papa, Lian?” You ask her – by the time you leave, Lian is never around and you are often the last teacher to leave the elementary school, except the janitors and occasionally the Principal.
Lian shrugs her shoulders. “I think Papa is late.” She looks around, her twin pig-tails moving around behind her. She really is one of the most adorable kids you have ever had the chance to teach and fortunately for you, she is also an angel and even though you are not supposed to play favourites, deep down inside, you know Lian is your absolute favourite.
“How about I hang out with you until your Papa comes?” You ask her before standing up straight. “Or do you want to tell your Papa to pick you up at the Deli shop at the corner of the block?” You take out your phone, briefly wondering if Lian knows her Papa’s phone number but let out a relieved sigh when she takes the phone from you and begin dialing her Papa’s number.
It takes a few seconds for Lian’s Papa to pick up and you can see it on her face when her eyes brighten up slightly. “Papa, it’s Lian! Ms. (last name) is nice enough to lend me her phone so I can call you!” She excitedly tells her Papa and you had to smile at that – why is Lian so cute? You wonder as you stare at the little girl. She must have also gotten her good looks from her mother too. This makes you think about Lian’s mother – from what she has told you, it is just her Papa and her and occasionally, if her Papa gets too busy, Lian gets to stay with some of her Papa’s friends. “Okay, I love you too, Papa!” She ends the call and hands the phone back to you – that is when you realize that you literally lost yourself in your thoughts. Smiling sheepishly, you ask the little lady what her Papa had said.
Lian grins at you. “Papa said he will try to get there in thirty minutes – is that enough time, Ms. (last name)?” She asks you and you grin at her before holding onto her hand.
“Of course, come on. Let’s go get some sandwiches and maybe a cookie or two.” You wink at the little girl as she squeals in happiness. The two of you spent the entire time talking about everything Lian likes to do and what you like to do during whatever spare time you have. Even when the two of you reached the Deli shop, Lian still continued to talk.
“Papa is really good at… arc – archery too!” Lian tells you proudly and you can really see just how much Lian looks up to her Papa and it warms your heart because you could remember being the same age and looking up to your own Dad. “Papa said I am still too young to go out with him but he teaches me archery whenever he is free so I have fun too!”
You are cut off from replying when the door opens and Lian all but perks up. If you had thought she had been happy earlier, this expression on her is something new – you turn around to follow her gaze and you flush immediately because Lian’s Papa is extremely good looking and unfortunately for you, you literally feel your mouth watering and the flush on your face grew heavier when he came closer.
“Lian!”
You are somewhat glad you are sitting down because dear God, his voice made your knees weak! Lian jumps down from her chair to run up to her Papa and giggles happily when her Papa begin to shower her face with kisses. You take that time to calm your body down.
“Ms. (last name)?”
You startle slightly before taking a deep breath and turning to face Lian’s Papa. No wonder Lian is such a beautiful girl too – her father alone is handsome. You wonder briefly just how beautiful her Mama had been. “Hi, Mr. Harper.” You greet him and he gives you a small smile that somewhat looked guilty to you. You stand up to hand him Lian’s bag.
“I am so sorry for not informing the school – I had some business to attend to and I thought I could make it back before the school lets her out and,” Lian snuggles closer to her Papa, now that he is finally here, Lian feels a tad bit drowsy. “I really am sorry for taking up so much of your time too. Can I buy you a coffee or something? As a thanks for looking after Lian.”
You smile at him, shaking your head to reject his offer. You honestly do not think you can stand being near Lian’s Papa without having a lot of impure thoughts. “Actually it was no trouble at all. Lian’s such a great kid, wonderful company too. I don’t mind.” You tell him and he frowns.
“Can I at least pay you back for spending money buying sandwiches and desserts for Lian then?” He tries once more, rubbing Lian’s back. You notice that Lian is now sleeping soundly in his arms and you had to resist the urge to coo at her.
You shake your head again, braving yourself to place your hand on top of his free hand and he stares at you. You flush slightly under his gaze and drop your hand from his. “It’s really fine, Mr. Harper – “
“Roy.”
“Excuse me?” You furrow your eyebrows.
He gives you another grin. “You can call me Roy. Mr. Harper sounds a little bit too stiffy for me.” He tells you. “That’s the least you can do since you aren’t accepting any other form of payment.” He tells you smartly and you had to bite the inside of your cheeks to stop yourself from laughing. He had bested you.
“Alright, Roy.” You let his name roll of your tongue. “Then you can call me Y/N but I really do have to tell you that it really is no problem – I have been meaning to eat here for a while and Lian, like I mentioned earlier, had been wonderful company but I really should not keep you. Poor Lian must have been really tired.” You point out to the sleeping girl and Roy nods his head.
“Can you at least let me drive you home? It started drizzling heavily when I was on my way here and I parked my car out front.” Roy informs you and you turn to look out of the window – a frown appears on your face. You must have been engrossed in your conversation with Lian to notice the rain. Walking under the rain sounds very tempting but alas, you remembered that you still need to grade the kids’ art projects and if you were to walk home in the rain, you know for sure, their projects will not survive.
So you turn to look at Roy and nod your head. “If you insist.” You tell him and he grins cheekily at you, causing him to look a tad bit boyish but still handsome nonetheless. The two of you immediately head towards the exit but before you can even step out, Roy gently tells you to hold on to Lian and he shifts Lian over to you before telling to stay put for a while. Before you can even get a word in, Roy rushes out and in a minute, he comes towards the door holding an umbrella.
Without exchanging any other words, you simply let Roy hold the umbrella over the two of you, careful to make sure none of the raindrops fall over Lian and unknown to you, Roy is staring at you. He chuckles inwardly – no wonder Lian is so taken with you.
The drive home is filled with comfortable silence, something that surprised you entirely because you only just met Lian’s Papa and you are often a little shy around strangers. Once your apartment is in sight, you immediately thank Roy once again and Roy shakes his head.
“It’s the least I can do – thank you.” Roy tells you earnestly and you grin at him. “For being a great teacher and company for Lian; she talks about you every time after school and I just never had the chance to say it.” He shrugs his shoulders and you blush slightly at his compliment.
“Have a good night, Roy and thank you for the ride.” You quickly tell him before getting out of the car and jogging towards your apartment. You feel like you might combust if you stayed longer – you probably have been out of the dating game for quite too long, you mutter to yourself as you made your way up to your floor but meeting Lian’s Papa had definitely been one of the best things that happened to you this year. With a smile on your face, you wonder briefly when you will be able to meet Lian’s Papa again.
139 notes · View notes
yup-ng · 4 years
Text
Actor Pete Edochie Says He Does Not Believe In Single Motherhood
Tumblr media
Veteran Nollywood Actor Pete Edochie was Interviewed recently by an SDK Correspondent in Asaba,D elta state and he opened up on how he feels about the current baby mama trend and also explains why someone might be born gay or lesbian.... How TO preserve our culture and appreciate IT What can be done is that you people should listen to your father, you don’t. I have 5 sons and they are all married. None of them has ever beaten up their wives and because they never saw me beat up their mother. I mean let us face it. All the teachings begin from the home. If you don’t teach your children properly from the home, when they get outside, they get wild. Women get over protective about their children and the moment you do that, you spoil the child. It is even in the bible… spare the rod and spoil the child. My father has seven boys. So when he wants to go to work, he assigns duties to all of us and by the time he goes to work, we all go out and play football. So, one day he came back very hungry. And his favourite soup is bitter leaf soup.  My mother believed that we had prepared the bitter leaf and she just poured the thing into the soup. My father came back, we pounded yam for him. He tried the first ball and he managed to drive it down. We saw the effort on his face. Nobody knew that it was because of the soup. He tried the second one. He saw that it was an affliction completely, so he washed his hands and asked me to go and get him a bottle of star. I did.  When he was drinking that star, he was thinking of how to deal with all of us. When he finished drinking his star, he went into the compound, brought out a branch of a guava plant, if you have ever been flogged with that, you know what it means. It doesn’t break. He called all of us and locked my mother inside and belabored us thoroughly. You see, if he hadn’t used that kind of hand on us, we would have been useless. So, he dealt with us. Most of the women are responsible for messing up their children because they want to over protect them. It is not a question of generational gap. You people should know. A bad thing is a bad thing. It doesn’t turn into good over time. Family values don’t change ever. If a child goes to a soup pot and picks a piece of meat, wallop him. Tell him it is wrong so he does not do it again. If you leave him to continue, it becomes a habit and there is no way he can break it anymore because you never told him this is bad. So if you people who are growing up are willing to listen to your parents, you will learn. RECALLS WHAT HURT HIM MOST What hurt me most was that I was inside a taxi with a woman. It was raining she looked at me and identified me and asked the driver to stop. We were inside a pool of water and the driver stopped. This woman came down from that car and did the sign of ‘God forbid’ flipping her fingers over her head. I kept imagining what I must have done to this woman. I didn’t tell her anything when I came into the taxi. She was there before me. She recognized me and asked the driver to stop. It was raining profusely. She insisted she must get out of the car. The driver stopped. Before she came out, she looked at me and did that sign and banged the door. The driver looked at me and asked me what I had done wrong to her. I didn’t know how to respond to him. So, if you play a good role very well, people will conclude that you are very bad person. Playing a bad role is very difficult. Again, you are invited to come and play the role of a native doctor. That is one role that a lot of people neglect. It is a very serious role. For those of us who consult with native doctors, we know what it means to be a native doctor. If you go to consult a native doctor, when he is doing his incantations, those effigies in front of him, the spirits he is consulting, you won’t know what he is doing. After his divination, he has found an answer. Then he looks at you and he greets you. All these while, he is oblivious of your presence. He will not scream. If you are a catholic you go for confession, nobody will know that you are telling the priest. It is the same thing.   But today, most of the people who are engaged to play that role all scream. That is not what it should be. The person who has come to consult you should not know what you are doing. When you are playing the role of a native doctor, all sorts of things are rubbed on your body. It makes you look like a clown and stupid. There is no native doctor that sits down. A native doctor is a normal human being but our make-up artists’ concept is funny. Most of the things you are doing are wrong because your generation is incorrigible. Let’s be very honest with ourselves. For as long as you remain that way, you will not learn anything. The people who today are taking commentaries as broadcasters don’t read. They have no details. They depend on what they pick up from their phones. For as long as you are not ready to read, there is no way you can improve on what you are doing. When Wole Soyinka came up with The Man Died, all the University students were carrying the book around. Some put it in their back pockets but didn’t read it. It was massaging their ego to say that they were carrying that book. You ask them why and they say they can’t understand Wole Soyinka. He is so difficult to understand and I don’t blame you too. HIS THOUGHTS ON SINGLE MOTHERHOOD AND THE BABY MAMA TREND You see, I appreciate classical music and art and anybody who appreciates these tends to be very conservative. I don’t believe in single motherhood. Really, it does not mean anything to me. See, a man and a woman who are White can decide to get married and agree that they will not have children. They become what you call live-ins.  That is not our culture. Now, some of you are being are being as stupid as some of those White women, you want to have your boobs stand out even after you have had children. That makes you a bloody buffoon. These boobs are meant for those children to suck them dry. That is why they are there. There is no way that you can raise children and still come out and prim yourself. You are not using your brains. What is single motherhood and what does it mean? Except your single motherhood is accidental. For you to go get pregnant for the fun of it and raise that child on your own, because you can, I don’t think I will encourage that or endorse it. First of all, under what influence is that child going to grow? Because you see, in order for a child to maintain some balance, there has to be an influence from the father and the mother. But if it is coming from just one side, there is no balance.  Most of the people who are born in Lagos regrettably do not know their fathers. You can tell from the scripts that they write. The way they insult older people, you will know that they don’t know their parents. Give me a script that was written from Lagos and I will tell you very easily. And when a boy who is trained in Lagos is talking to an elder, he pockets both hands. And that is the influence under which they grew because of societal indulgence. Ordinarily, women in Igbo land don’t challenge their husbands to fight. It is not our culture. By the way, the best husbands are Igbo husbands and I am not joking.  I came from a production in Abuja recently. The woman I was married to on set was a Yoruba lady. Her permanent regret was that she was not allowed to marry the Igbo man that she was in love with and she kept saying, Chief, I am not saying this to flatter you and I told her you cannot flatter me now. I have been married for 51 years. She said the best husbands are Igbo men. It is true. When you are married to an Igbo man, he goes on tour, makes money and wants to do shopping. The first thing he does, he buys for his wife, then for his children, and if anything is left, he buys for himself. I am being very honest with you. That influence gets amplified along the line. On mothering Sunday, your children will remember their mother and they will buy a lot of things for her. On fathering Sunday, they will buy a bottle of Whiskey for their fathers. The only thing we ever get is things like drinks. Is it fair? What about some women of marriageable age say late 30s or early 40s without husbands but want kids. What do think about that because automatically, she turns into a single mum? Individual philosophy comes in. ordinarily; I won’t condemn such a woman. She wants to have children, husbands are not forthcoming, but of course there are virile men who can step in, stop gap husbands, at the end of the day, she gets pregnant, you can sympathize with her as far as I am concerned, therefore in that aspect, I think I will not condemn such a person. No. HIS THOUGHTS ON LESBIANS AND GAYS The other day, somebody was asking me questions about lesbians and gay characters. You know, it is very easy to condemn characters like that but that thing is highly spiritual and if I say it, I may not make sense to some of you but I think in due course, you will understand. I believe in reincarnation. A lady can get so fond of her friend and then dies. She would want to be part of that family so that she can stay very close to that friend of hers. She gets born into that family but instead of being born as a woman, he gets born as a man but remember that the spirit that got into that pregnancy is that of a woman and it now manifests as a man, When he sees a man he is attracted to him because you know why? The spirit in him is a female spirit. Very few people can tell you this. I am not saying this felicitously but saying this with plenty of metaphysical authority. This is why sometimes it is not good to rush condemnation when it comes to an issue that you do not understand. This is why the Pope said they should be looked upon with plenty of sympathy. He had his reasons for saying that. It is not everything actually that people understand when it is explained to them. So, when you find the spirit of a woman inhabiting a man, that man will display the characteristics of a woman, get up, paint his lips and he won’t know why he is doing all that and vice versa. People who know are not always in a hurry to condemn. HIS THOUGHTS ON SUCCEEDING On a final note, Train. You never lose anything by training. You don’t lose anything if you train. People are apprenticed for various vocations except human leadership. And this is why politicians make a lot of mistakes. If you want to succeed, you have to undergo a period of apprenticeship. There is nothing rewarding in this world that does not involve some degree of sacrifice. Genius is 90% perspiration and 10% aspiration. I want to be this – that is aspiration and you invest energy in trying to be that – that is 90% perspiration. That is what makes you a genius. The way you react to flattery will not guarantee you success in the industry. To criticize is not to condemn. Read the full article
0 notes
voidchill · 7 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
In 9:18 Dragon, a 6 year old human is found in the Kocari Wilds. Her demonstration of magic grants her a one-way ticket to Kinloch Hold.
These events would hardly stand out if not for two facts: 1) She knows she's trapped in a video game. 2) She was 26 years old, the last she checked.
The upside: 12 years should be more than enough time to come up with a plan to survive the impending Blight. (She hopes)
[Note: This story is also on AO3]
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
Warnings for body shaming.
[9:18 Dragon] [Helena: 6 years old – Thedas | 26 years old – Earth]
 Mom stands in front of the stove in a pair of short shorts and a hoodie, her platinum hair swept up into a bun on the very top of her head with a red scrunchie.  She dishes up her signature Hamburger Helper with a side of mashed potatoes and peas.  
Helena counts only four plates.  Sometimes she wonders if Mom actually eats.
“She got more mashed potatoes than me,” Abby whines once Mom divvies up the plates.
“No, I didn’t,” Rebecca sneers back.  “You already ate half of yours cuz you’re fat.”
Alex chortles at the end of the table, shaking with mirth from his slim arms up to his light brown bowl cut.  
Helena watches from across the table as Abby’s eyes well with tears.
“Shut up,” Abby demands, glaring from under her own messier bowl cut.
“Fatty, fatty, boom-buh-latti,” Alex singsongs.
With a war cry, Abby brings a meaty fist down on Alex’s bony left shoulder.
Alex stops laughing.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarls, shoving Abby.
Abby’s eyes widen in panic, her hands grasping onto the end of the table to keep her chair upright.
“Knock it off,” Mom scolds as she steps between them, her long, bony fingers curling around each of their arms.
“She started it,” Alex hisses, jerking against her grip.
“I don’t care who started it, I’m finishing it.”
“Can I have more mashed potatoes?” Rebecca asks, her tone almost as bright as her long blonde hair.
Helena notes the smug curl to her lips as Mom releases their younger siblings to take her plate.
“But I asked first,” Abby points out.
“I know, hold on,” Mom says, scooping another dollop onto Rebecca’s plate.
Abby pouts.
Helena looks down at her own plate.  Mom gave her one of the chipped ones, but at least she left out those soggy noodles. Plain hamburger gravy poured on a scoop of mashed potatoes—just the way she likes it.  Well, almost.  She grimaces at the small pile of peas encroaching on her mashed potatoes and nudges them away with her fork.
“You better be eating those peas.”
Helena glances up to find Mom frowning down at her from the other side of the table.
“I love peas,” Rebecca announces from Mom’s left, tilting her chin up as she sucks a scoop off of her spoon.
“Me too,” Abby adds from her right.
Alex fumes, glaring down at his plate as he rubs the arm Mom grabbed.
“I don’t,” Helena mutters down at her plate.
“They’re good for you,” Mom says.
“They’re gross,” Helena insists, poking one.  She grimaces at the green ooze on the end of her fork.
Mom’s frown deepens, her wrinkles sinking further, almost as if someone carved them there.
“I don’t care if you like them or not.  They’re good for you,” she repeats in that tone that makes Helena’s shoulders hunch, “and you’re not leaving this table until you eat them.”
Helena glares down at her plate.  She can’t eat them, she’ll throw up.  Why does she have to choke these stupid peas down?  Why didn’t Mom make more of an effort?  Why didn’t she find vegetables that Helena could eat?  If Mom had exposed Helena to different vegetables then, she could—
Helena blinks, dropping her fork.
“I don’t have to eat this,” she realizes, staring at her hands, her fingers slim but long.
Too long for this script.
Another fork clangs onto one of the plates across from her.
“Excuse me?” Mom hisses. “You will eat every single pea on that plate or—”
Helena raises her head. The seats around the table are empty.
“No, I really fucking won’t.”
Mom gasps.
“What did you just say?”
“Fuck, fuckety, fuck fuck,” Helena replies in a jaunty tune, pushing back her chair.
“You—sit back down and finish your dinner,” Mom demands.  “Now.”
“Screw you—you’re not my real mom.”  Helena laughs, looking down at her, even if only by an inch or so.  “Besides, even if you were, I still wouldn’t have to eat shit.”
The Thing pretending to be her mom jerks closer, its body thinning as it stretches taller, and Helena wants to laugh.  Their height difference had always been near negligible—just that inch or so.  The Thing could double its size, but it couldn’t shove Helena back down onto small hands and clumsy legs.  Not now.
The Thing stops growing after half a foot and strides through the table between them, the illusion warping around its form as its face cracks.
The Thing hisses, “You little—”
“This isn’t real,” Helena points out, triumphant even as her heart thunders in her chest.
A bright flash of light fills the room and Helena shields her eyes, staggering back.  When she drops her arm, she finds both the light and her old kitchen gone, along with whatever had worn the guise of her mother. A path bracketed by rocks extends before her, the world a wash of green and a vacuous darkness.
“’And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,’” Helena murmurs, turning in place with wide eyes.
“Where did you find that?” a voice asks from behind her.
Helena jumps and whips around, catching a glimpse of gold and purple before the world tilts and she smacks into stone.
“Ow,” she hisses, blinking bleary eyes around her.
A faint, flickering light illuminates the stone walls of the infirmary.  She leans against the cot behind her and reaches to untangle the blanket around her legs, pausing when she sees her childlike hands.
Not like, she corrects, shoulders falling.
 …
 Helena steps into Irving's office, hands clenched in the fabric of her robes to keep from tripping. Her gaze sweeps across the bookshelves, but she resists the urge to investigate further.  Based on her playthroughs of Inquisition, she knows the likelihood of finding any texts written with the English alphabet is low.
And isn't that a Harrowing thought—a bibliophile unable to read.
"Do you have an interest in books?" Irving's voice snaps Helena's gaze to the opposite side of the room, watching the man stride forward and sift through some papers on his desk.
Once again, she strains under the desire for honesty.  Who knows what age children learn to read in this world?  Her answer might betray her in some way.
Irving turns around and Helena shrugs, her lips twisting.
“You will have plenty of time to familiarize yourself in the coming months,” Irving comments as he meanders passed her.  He raises a hand to the bookcase and plucks out a slim book.  “You might even discover an appreciation for them.”
Helena pictures her bookcases at home, the shelves warping under the weight of her collection.
Irving opens the book to a page with a few drawings and offers it to Helena.  Her shoulders slump, but she keeps her hands gentle as she studies the strange symbols scribed across the yellowed paper.
“What does it say?” she asks, gaze caught on a sketch of a young woman surrounded by some kind of force field.
“I’ve found this book to be quite helpful as an introductory text.  This page,” Irving taps on the sketch of the young woman, “describes just one of the many ways your gifts can be harnessed to protect you.”
A slew of responses rise to the forefront of her thoughts, but fracture before reaching her mouth.
“Oh,” Helena murmurs instead of contributing, gaze shifting to the swirling dark figures pressing against the woman’s barrier.
“The common term for this spell is ‘Mind Blast,’” Irving says, with a note of amused exasperation, “though it’s far more complex than such a name would suggest.  The bash of a warrior’s shield cannot compare to this spell’s concussive force or ‘blast.’”
Helena glances up at Irving, noting the rehearsed quality of his words that spoke of past arguments.  
“It’s a wave of pure will drawn from deep within the caster,” Irving explains.  “To use it to stagger an opponent is to overpower their own force of will, even if only for a moment.”
“Will you teach me?” Helena wonders, voice small.
Irving smiles.
“You will learn that and more, child.  Here at the Circle, we are dedicated to educating our apprentices in the arcane arts, so that they may hone their craft and prepare themselves for the difficulties ahead.”
Helena closes the book.
“You mean demons?”
Something in Irving’s smile or his eyes shifts, and Helena recalls that cutscene she watched on YouTube once upon a time, wherein he urged both Amell and Surana to trick Jowan.
“Yes, demons are but one difficulty you will face.”
Helena restrains herself from scoffing at that.
No kidding.
“Tell me, child, can you remember your first use of magic?  What led you into the Wilds?”
Helena remembers blinking in something deeper than darkness, something absent and void, ears so clogged with that void that even her thoughts grew muffled under the panic, throat scraped raw from—screaming?  Was she screaming?
She remembers her life on Earth.  Her family, her friends.  She can visualize her bedroom with all its clutter and knickknacks.
She tries to recall what led to that moment of silent cacophony and finds only absence.
The last thing she did, the last person she spoke to—all swallowed in that void.
And then the templars.
“No,” Helena admits. She shifts in place, tapping her thumb against the book.  “Do you know how the templars found me?”
Irving sighs, though not unkindly.
“Do not trouble yourself. I am certain you will recover those memories in time.”  Irving extends a hand and Helena returns the book, trying not to frown.  “In the meantime, let us focus on getting you settled.”
Helena wants to insist Irving give her a real answer, but in the end she just nods, trailing after him.  He leads her into the hallway and she works to keep her steps measured, grimacing at the thought of meeting anyone else.
14 notes · View notes
thefuturesendbysan · 7 years
Text
Chapter 1
A man stands on a hilltop overlooking a battlefield. Before him, he sees the bodies of his comrades and enemies alike littering the landscape. He looks down at his side to his twin swords, one in each hand, glowing blue and covered in blood.
“It had to be done, it was the only way,” a concerned voice approaches from behind him.
“No,” he replies sadly. “There had to have been another way.”
“Makoto! Makoto!”
He hears his name being called repeatedly behind him. He turns around to look for who is calling him. Only to find no one there.
“Makoto. Hey Makoto!”
He turns around again looking for the source of the voice. The trees around him suddenly grow higher and higher, towering above him. He looks down at his body to find that he now has the build of a young boy. A sudden fog clouds his vision. As it slowly clears, a room comes into focus.
Makoto finds himself sitting in a chair by a window in his room.
He gazes out a window overlooking a field of lush green grass that extends for what seems like miles toward a forest of massive pine trees. A slight wind blows, making the tall grass dance around. His eyes follow a flock of birds flying from the forest toward his village. He watches them as they soar over Valifield.
The voice calls for him again, ripping him back to reality. He slowly turns to look at the girl who is yelling for him.
His lifelong friend, Chelsea, stands behind him perfectly framed in the doorway like a work of art. She has a petite build and looks mature for her age of thirteen. Although she is naturally quite pale, her skin is lightly tanned, showing signs that she works outside. Like Makoto, she is wearing tight brown cloth pants and a bright white shirt. Makoto notices that her usually fierce hazel-brown eyes appear strangely filled with concern. As she bends down to look him in the eyes, she brushes her bright red shoulder-length hair out of her face to the back of her ear.
Makoto looks at her with a slightly puzzled expression. He wonders why she looks so flustered. Like his friend, he is also thirteen; however, he is slightly shorter and less stocky than she. He has jet-black, unkempt hair that falls down and covers his ears. He has dark blue eyes. He has a darker complexion than she, however his is a natural skin tone.
“What is it, Chelsea?” Makoto responds, visibly annoyed at her for rousing him from his trance.
“Why weren’t you answering me?” she asks, her voice wavering as if she were worried.
“I was just daydreaming a little. It’s been a long day,” he retorts.
“Yes, but I have been calling you for five minutes, then I was standing right behind you and you still ignored me,” Chelsea says.
“I was not ignoring you. I told you I was daydreaming,” he replies, slightly agitated.
He turns around and stares out the window, trying to remember what he was daydreaming about. Try as he might, he cannot. I am sure it was something important, he thinks to himself.
“So why were you calling me?” Makoto asks, looking back at her.
“Well, it’s dinnertime, but more importantly, your dad is going to take us out to do some training after we eat!” Chelsea replies excitedly.
“What? He is finally going to start teaching us how to fight!” Makoto responds happily. Suddenly, Makoto is flooded with memories of watching his dad spar with Chelsea’s dad. Their awesome displays of power have always fascinated him, prompting him to bug his father regularly for lessons. However, every time he asks, the response has always been the same: “You’re too young.”
“Yes, my parents agreed to let me train, too. It should be fun,” Chelsea says through a beaming smile.
“Well then let’s go!” Makoto replies as he makes his way downstairs.
Makoto jumps over the last few steps and lands on the stone floor in the kitchen, nearly running into the wooden table in the middle of the room. Behind him, Chelsea enters much more gracefully than her friend. Makoto looks for his dad. To his disappointment, he is nowhere to be found. He looks at the dark wooden front door and wonders when he will return.
His mother works in the corner bent over a wood-burning stove. Two windows located on the cedar wall to her left allow just enough light into the room for her to cook by. She turns around, smiling. She is a woman of amazing beauty, tall with a slender build and silky black hair that runs down to the middle of her back. Its darkness is striking against the white cloth dress she is wearing. She stares at Makoto, who peers into her light green eyes, seeing his reflection in them.
“What were you doing up there?” she inquires with sternness in her voice. “Chelsea has been trying to get your attention for quite a while now.”
“I was just looking out the window thinking,” his voice trails off. “Anyway, what’s for dinner?”
“Roast duck, with the green beans and carrots that your father picked up from the market this morning,” she replies, turning back to the stove.
“It smells delicious, Mura,” Chelsea remarks.
The front door creaks open. A tall man steps over the threshold into the kitchen, holding an old, dilapidated wood-chopping ax. He wipes some sweat from his forehead as he steps inside. He has a strong, sturdy build, which is a sharp contrast from Makoto’s, but he has the same unkempt hair and blue eyes. His white shirt and dark brown cloth trousers are covered in dirt from a long day of labor.
“Welcome home, Taisho. Busy day?” Mura asks as she sets their dinner on the table.
“Yes. We managed to prepare the fields for the summer planting season,” he replies as he sets down his ax and takes a seat at the wooden table.
“Dad, are you really going to teach me how to fight after dinner?” Makoto interrupts.
“Yes, but it is not going to be as fun as you think. You, too, Chelsea. I will not be going easy on ether one of you,” he says, smiling.
“I am just surprised my parents agreed to it,” Chelsea replies as she pulls out a chair and joins him.
“Well, it took some convincing, but in the end your dad decided it would help keep you disciplined,” Taisho replies.
Makoto and his mother join the other two at the table, and they all dive into their meal. Both Makoto and Chelsea shovel down their dinners in eager anticipation of the evening’s activities. By the time everyone finishes, it has already grown dark.
Taisho is the first to rise. Upon standing, he strides toward the door. “Come on, you two. Let’s go,” he says as he picks up his ax. Once outside, he grabs a tattered leather backpack and a lantern by the door.
They set off in the direction of town. Valifield is nestled in a large forest clearing, brimming with lush green plants and beautiful flowers. Along its outskirts lie farm fields, all of which are now barren after the recent harvest. As they walk, Makoto shifts his gaze toward the trees that stand tall beyond the parched fields, like centurions guarding a forbidden realm. A sense of wonder fills him as he ponders the mysteries of the world beyond the trees. He has never been allowed to go into the forest; only the adults of Valifield are allowed to go into the forest to hunt.
A short while later, they pass through the heart of town. Makoto takes in the sights around him. The village buildings are made of old oak wood and aged red brick. In all, there stand over four dozen structures of various shapes and sizes, including a water mill, a church, and homes for the town’s 120 residents. In the village there are ninety-six adults, ranging in age from thirty-five to forty, and twenty-four kids, all the age of thirteen.
Makoto glances back toward his own home, perched atop a small hill near the perimeter of the clearing. Its softly glowing windows have disappeared from view and only the straw roof remains visible. A bird catches his attention, and he shifts his gaze up to the sky. It is a beautiful, moonless night. An ocean of stars lie in the heavens above. He looks in front of him, where he sees Chelsea happily walking. They arrive at the opposite edge of town and continue on. Much to the surprise of the children, they seem to be heading towards the forest.
“Where are we going, Dad?” Makoto asks.
“Into the forest, of course,” Taisho replies as he, too, looks up at the sky, taking in the wonder of the stars.
“Really?” Makoto replies with a huge smile on his face. For the first time in his life, he is about to leave the sheltering embrace of the only place he has ever called home to step into a brand-new realm shrouded in mystery.
When they arrive at the mouth of the forest, Makoto looks up in wonder at the enormous trees whose colossal limbs weave together to form a thick canopy dense enough to completely black out any light from the stars above. He looks over to see Chelsea, who is just as awestruck as he is by the fantastic sight. Taisho carefully lights the lantern in his right hand and holds it high in front of him. Its soft glow barely illuminates the path before them.
The trio trudge along the crooked trail for what seems like over an hour. Under the faint glow of the lantern, all they can see is a tangle of roots and some mossy rocks that litter the ground beneath their feet. Soon, Makoto notices a luminous blue haze somewhere in the distance. He squints but is unable to make out the source of the light. As they approach the source of the light, something begins to come into focus. Perched atop a small hill sits an ancient wooden hut bathed in the delicate light of the mysterious blue glow. Makoto still cannot seem to make out the source of the light, but it seems to be emanating from somewhere behind the structure. Makoto looks up at his dad puzzled as they continue their trek towards the hut.
“Dad what is this place?” he inquires  
“This is where we are going to be staying for the next month,” Taisho states. “During this time I will be pushing you day and night to whip you into shape.”
“We are going to be out here for a whole month?” Makoto exclaims with great surprise in his voice.
“Yes, it would have been longer but your mother insisted otherwise,” Taisho replies.
“It would have been longer?” Chelsea asks, joining the conversation.
“Yes. I told you it was not going to be easy. All the food you need you will get out of the forest. Behind the hut is a river; you will bathe in the waters there.” Taisho says as he mounts the stairs leading to the entrance of the hut.
“I wish you would have told us that we would be gone for so long. I would have brought a change of clothes with me,” Chelsea says, now sounding a lot less excited than she did back at the house.
Together, they trudge up the rickety steps of their temporary new home. They step onto a wraparound porch, and approach a pair of double wooden doors that are framed on either side by two large windows. Taisho pushes the doors open and they step inside. A musty odor greets Makoto’s nose as he steps on the timeworn floor. It seems that this place has been vacant for quite some time.
Taisho fumbles in his pocket, looking for something. After a moment, he pulls out a small matchbook and strikes a flame. He uses the match to bring life to a candle sitting on a table by the door. He picks up the candlestick and shares its flame with several candelabras throughout the room.
Makoto looks around him as the room becomes illuminated. They are standing in a large common area, with two small rooms attached off either side. He notices a thick layer of dust on the wooden floor that has built up over the years. The paneled oak walls are completely blank, with the exception of three swords hanging on the far wall, by a back door.
“This place is a total dump,” Makoto gripes.
“But you are not here for comfort, are you?” Taisho asks.
Taisho walks to a small door near the entrance. Inside is a storage closet, where he places his gear.
“Makoto, the two of us will be sleeping in the room to the right, and Chelsea will be sleeping in the one to the left,” Taisho explains. “All right, Makoto, come help me get the beds set up. Chelsea, why don’t you go out and wash up? There is a robe for you in your bedroom.”
Chelsea nods at Taisho’s directions and heads toward her room. She carefully takes a lit candle from a fixture by the door and walks inside. The room is pitch-black. The lone window on the front wall has no light to offer on this moonless night.
In the center of the room, there is a wooden table with another candle on it. Chelsea slowly walks over to the candle and lights it. She gently blows out the other candle in her hand and sets it down. The light emitted from the table’s candle is not substantial, however, it is enough to illuminate her room. As she continues to look around, she walks up to a small closet; it has no doors, but contains the robe that Taisho mentioned.
“This is going to be a long month,” she sighs. “Why did he not tell me we were going to be gone this long? Oh, well, at least I will finally learn how to fight.” A slightly evil grin appears on her face for a brief second. “I will learn how to protect him.”
Chelsea grabs the robe and takes the few steps required to exit the room. As she reenters the main room, she sees Makoto and his father unloading a pair of straw mattresses from the storage closet near the entrance to the hut. She heads to the back door, and then notices the three swords hanging on the wall. After taking a moment to examine them, she notices that they are remarkably unremarkable.
The swords each have a straight steel blade protruding from a simple leather-bound hilt, with a basic circular steel guard around the handle to protect the user from injury by an opponent’s blade. Chelsea runs her index finger down the back edge of the nearest blade, finding it to be completely dull. In an almost trancelike state, she tilts her head, catching her own hazy reflection in the dull reflection of the steel. She runs her finger up the other side and is startled out of her trance by a sudden twinge of pain. She looks at her finger in shock. Blood spurts from a fresh, self-inflicted wound.
After the initial shock, she shrugs, pops her finger into her mouth, pushes open the back door, and steps onto the gravel walkway. As she walks, she keeps her head down, focusing on the path. Soon, the sound of gushing water fills her ears. Still looking at the ground, she follows the path around a corner. It is not until she is fully basked in some sort of faint blue glow that she looks up. She freezes. Her finger falls from her mouth, and she stares in amazement.
“This is no river. It’s a huge pond at the bottom of a waterfall!”
Chelsea looks around, trying to absorb all the beauty. A small clearing surrounds the pond. Above her, she sees a hole carved out among the treetops, allowing the stars to shine down brightly. However, the light filtering down from the stars fails to explain the blue glow encompassing the area.
Looking around, she notices a sea of lively fireflies dancing on the surface of the crystal-clear water. As they quickly land and take off, they send small ripples through the water. Farther upstream, water cascades down a cliff, hitting several smaller rock cliffs, before coming to a thundering crescendo as it falls into a pond. Along the perimeter of the pond she sees hundreds of brilliant blue flowers. The flowers emanate a vivid blue glow; they are the source of the light.
“Wow. Hikaru Yuka. I have never seen this many before,” Chelsea says as the light from the flower reflects in her eyes.
The Hikaru Yuka, an exceedingly rare flower that only blooms at night, grows around ponds and small rivers. The flower glows a bright blue and emits a mystical sparkle. The petals of the flower twirl outward, getting brighter the farther they are from the center. Chelsea casually picks one, rubs it against her nose and inhales a deep breath.
“This sweet smell comforts me every time,” Chelsea says as she puts down the flower and goes in the pond to wash up.
 ***
 Makoto takes a deep breath and then grabs ahold of the straw mattress. Together with his father, he drags it out of the cramped storage closet.
“Dad, why didn’t you tell us that we are going to be out here for so long?” Makoto asks as they set the mattress in Chelsea’s room. Much to his amazement, it fits in the cramped space.
After a brief pause, Taisho replies, “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“OK, but why did you decide to start training us now?” Makoto continues.
“You have reached the age where you need to learn how to defend yourself; we need more people to help us protect Valifield, so it just seemed like the proper time,” Taisho replies, trying to drop the topic.
“Protect Valifield? From what?” Makoto protests. “It’s not like knowing how to fight can protect us from a natural event; like a drought.”
“There are forces at play that are far more destructive than a drought,” Taisho replies. “In time you will come to understand.”
Makoto looks up at him, puzzled by this remark. “So are the other kids in the village getting trained, too?”
“All of the kids will be getting some form of training, but not all of them will receive combat training. The village only needs so many people to defend it. We also need farmers and doctors, so some of the kids will be educated in those areas.” Taisho stops what he is doing and looks his son right in the eyes.
“Why were Chelsea and I selected to receive combat training? Why us? I am thrilled that we get to train under you, but I wonder why the other kids—”
The back door swings open, interrupting Makoto midsentence. Chelsea walks in wearing a pure white robe. Her red hair appears a few shades darker. As she stands in the doorway, playing with her wet hair, she looks at both Makoto and his father.
“The bath is free, but it’s starting to get cold outside,” she states.
“Why don’t you go get washed up then, Makoto?” suggests Taisho. “I will gather some firewood before it gets too late. After you come back, you should head to bed. Chelsea, I have a book I would like you to start reading before you go to sleep.”
Taisho walks to the closet, reaches into his backpack, and pulls out a book. He tosses it to Chelsea.
“I will probably be gone for a while gathering firewood. We will be getting up early tomorrow,” he says as he walks outside, closing the door behind him.
Once Taisho departs, Makoto grabs his robe. He looks at Chelsea and says, “Well, I guess I am going to take a bath. I will be back soon.”
After bidding him good night, Chelsea returns to her room. As she closes the door behind her, she hears a sudden crash, followed by Makoto swearing. She smiles, shakes her head, and looks around her room. Her soft bed beckons to her.
“That idiot fell,” she says as she makes herself comfortable on the bedding. “He has always been so clumsy.” A smile crosses her face.
She turns her attention to the book. It is a rather small volume, made of brown leather, with gold writing on it. Judging by the stale smell and frail binding, it has to be several generations old. She notices a page unlike the rest sticking out from the middle of the book. She pulls it out and examines it. She recognizes the wavy writing as her mother’s. “Figured you should read this now that you are alone with a guy.”
Before she has time to consider the confusing note, the cover of the book catches her eye. She reads the title: The Making of Children. Opening to the first page, she reaches for the candle sitting on the table, pulling it closer.
She reads through the first chapter. Her eyes grow wider. Her face turns bright red with embarrassment. As she continues to flip through the book, she suddenly gets distracted. There is something peculiar about her right index finger.
“What happened to the cut I had?” she wonders aloud, rubbing her finger in wonder. “It is completely healed, but how?”
A knock on the door startles her. She sets the book on the table and slowly shoves it away.
“Chelsea, it’s me. Can I come in?” she hears Makoto ask.
“Sure,” Chelsea replies, forgetting about her finger.
Makoto enters the room wearing a white robe similar to hers. Still dripping wet, he looks at the table and walks over to the book.
“Is this the book my dad gave you? What is it about?”
“How about you give it a quick read?” She grins.
Makoto opens the book and starts to read. His jaw drops as he flips through the pages. Like Chelsea’s, his face turns completely red. He tosses the book back onto the table as if it were a snake about to bite him. Chelsea laughs uncontrollably.
“What is that? Why did you have me read it? Is that true?” he asks in a flustered voice.
“For some reason, my mom felt that I needed to read this. I suppose it’s true. My mom is a doctor, so she would know.” Her laughter subsides, and she adds, “Pretty interesting, huh?”
“Sure, I guess you can call it that,” he replies as he sits down across from her.
“So, what were you daydreaming about earlier today?” Chelsea asks. “You were so focused you didn’t even hear me. It must have been fascinating.”
Deciding that the topic would not be dropped unless he provided an answer, he makes one up. “I was just thinking about our childhood. Not that we are very old now, but, you know, about how we met, and how we have become such close friends.”
“Oh, those are some good memories,” Chelsea says, as she leans back in her bed, remembering the events of how they first met.
1 note · View note
quecksilvereyes · 7 years
Text
How do we survive?
Tumblr media
survive [ser-vahyv] verb (used without object), sur·vived, sur·viv·ing.
1.       to remain alive after the death of someone, the cessation of something, or the occurrence of some event; continue to live: I don’t have anyone that cares about me.
2.        to remain or continue in existence or use: I’m not your achievement, I’m your son.
3.       to remain alive or in existence; live on: Why can’t I say G-.
Surviving is an art that’s painted across your body. It’s in Simon’s teeth, in the sun on his skin, in Maia’s throat, in her cracking bones, it’s in Jace’s runes, in his cocky smile as he downs drink after drink. It’s in Maia’s claws as she scratches the walls of a room that’s much too small, of a room she begged not to be left in please don’t do this Luke please don’t do this to me, as she hears her bones crack and her clothes tear, as she tries to get out, get out, get out of here. It’s in Simon’s borrowed blood as it drips from his throat, as he sinks his teeth into Jace’s arm, as he drinks and drinks, as Valentine screams and cuts him open, save your boyfriend Clarissa. It’s in Jace’s speech, as he flirts with nameless seelies, as he takes them home just to forget about them, as he drinks and drinks, as Valentine cooks fresh spaghetti to love is to destroy Jonathan, as he cannot swear his loyalty to the clave. Surviving is eating when you don’t want to. It’s getting out of bed and putting on clothes when all you want is shut out the world. It’s adjusting to a life without your mother. It’s tasting dirt and growling and throwing blades. It’s holding your head high and keep walking.
It’s being advisor to the interim chapter president of the New York vampire clan, parabatai to the acting head of the New York institute, member of the New York wolf pack. It’s never seeing the sun again, it’s not counting the faded iratzes, it’s never getting upset again. It’s nightmares and cold beds and pacing through the room and breathing, breathing despite it all, it’s smiling at parabatai, at best friend, at pack, it’s rambling and smugness and anger.
It’s blood.
Blood in Simon’s mouth, blood drying on Jace’s knuckles, infected blood coursing through Maia’s veins. It’s voices and shattered mirrors and a police man who kneels down and says he cares (he doesn’t, he throws everything away for a shadowhunter, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t).
It’s also conversations in the middle of the night, and cooking breakfast at 11 am in Magnus’ flat while he takes Alec to a restaurant in Cairo, it’s flour on the ceiling and dough in Jace’s hair, it’s egg yolk on Simon’s glasses and butter on Maia’s shirt. It’s the sun streaming through the windows and Simon staying where he is, it’s Jace kissing Maia’s scars and Maia swirling around with the hot pan in her hand. It’s laughter and a messy kitchen, just them for a little while. It’s Jace coming home and crawling into his bed and noticing that there are two people waiting for him, half asleep, quietly quarrelling about Star Wars and video games and comic books, it’s burying his head in Maia’s hair and Maia pulling Simon closer to her while she insists that Captain Kirk isn’t a womanizer and Simon wholeheartedly agrees. It’s Magnus barging into Jace’s room and demanding they let him make the room larger, it’s Magnus insisting that Simon stays, it’s Alec standing in the doorframe with tousled hair wearing nothing but an old hoodie.
It’s making sure to never lock a door, it’s setting up a computer in the largest room Magnus doesn’t need, it’s playing computer games for days, teaching Jace how to use a mouse, it’s Jace watching in awe as Simon and Maia rile each other up, throwing chips and pillows and cursing up a storm. It’s going to the cinema, hands laced into each other, fitting into a couple’s seat together, Simon curled up on Jace’s lap, his head on Maia’s shoulder, it’s two and a half hours of darkness and plot points and characters, and Jace falling asleep after ten minutes, his chest rising and falling slowly. It’s Simon talking a mile a minute, not caring that Jace doesn’t answer because Maia is invested enough for the two of them, it’s Simon kissing Maia when she’s made a particularly brilliant comment. It’s holding a funeral for a bird that has long since died, it’s digging out a plain white dress shirt and a white dress with just the tiniest spot, it’s whispering a name Jace hasn’t uttered in years, it’s Simon dragging them to the pet shop and sacrificing the last of his savings so Jace can pick another animal to love, to cherish. It’s Jace kneeling down in front of a tiny one eyed kitten that cowers in the corner and hisses. It’s Maia laughing because of course Jace picks the cat that fits into the palm of his hand and that would bite him while demanding to be held. It’s Maia running her hand over Jace’s back, whispering “It’s so you” with a soft voice, it’s Simon grinning and playfully hissing at the snakes that just blink and flick their tongues.
It’s waking up screaming in the middle of the night because somebody left the window open and now the whole room is wet, it’s still flinching when the sun rises and the birds start singing, it’s yelling at Luke to do what he’s supposed to because he is not Nephilim anymore, he’s alpha, he’s alpha and this is his pack. It’s offering Jace hugs and kisses and arched backs when he dreams of touching the soul sword, when he sees half the downworld die again, when it’s his fault that the second in command to the alpha of the New York wolf pack lies on the cold stone floor, unmoving, caught in between – not wolf and not man, when Valentine crawls back under his skin. It’s talking to Raphael and listening, for once, for the first time, to bite back excuses and explanations, to say sorry and mean it, to apologize for letting her out, for disobeying, to ask are you okay? It’s looking into the mirror and thinking I’m repulsive, I’m a monster, why did you bring me back to this nothing where I have to feed and I have to hide from the sun and I can’t bear to be by the people that I love?
Surviving is this, it’s living, despite it all. It’s dark curls and scars and a steady whisper of Jewish prayers and a stele on top of a blood bag and fur on Magnus’ fine silk sheets. It’s kisses and sleeping in on a Wednesday and picking up a guitar again, it’s apologizing to Maureen, it’s keeping distance to Clary, it’s blood and skin and bones.
Because sometimes, even to live is an act of courage and Simon may not be brave, but he can learn, can help Jace and Maia fight their demons as he struggles to fight his, and Maia may not be patient, but she can read book after book of shadowhunter history to find a name for Jace that fits, that doesn’t reek of Valentine and his sickening smiles, and Jace might not be balanced, but he can hug Maia and Simon close to his chest and dry their tears, listen to their worries.
Tumblr media
               love                [luhv]                noun
1.       a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person: Well, I’m actually happy that I didn’t maul you to death.
2.       a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, friend or partner: I would have killed you.
3.       sexual passion or desire: I would have let you.
_______________________________________
@protectraphaelsantiago
LOOK WHAT I DID DAMN AM I PROUD OF MYSELF
If you enjoy my writing, consider buying me a coffee <3
70 notes · View notes
Text
Engage! Luxury Wedding Summits Nizuc 2019
Las Vegas Wedding Planner Andrea Eppolito at Engage! Luxury Wedding Summit. Images by Banga Studios, Charla Storey, Corbin Gurkin, John Cain, Kan Photography, Luis Zepeda, Mike Larson, Rachel May, and Theo Milo.
For ten Engage! conferences, I have returned home, settled in front of my computer, and dutifully shared my reflections. In the early days, my posts centered mainly on the iconic speakers that stood before me, the information I had gathered, and the inspiring decor and production value of every moment from the gifting to the gala. Ten Engage! Luxury Summits come and gone. The icons are still present, the education is still valuable, and the gala is always a mesmerizing spectacle to behold. Engage! has grown, but the heart of the conference has not changed. What has changed, in fact, is me.
Ten Engage!s later, I am both attendee and speaker. My level of confidence has grown alongside my business. I no longer take every word as gospel. Instead, I set the content against what I believe to be true. I learn something monumental with every conference I attend, whether it be new information that inspires me to change my business or simply confirmation that I am doing what I need to do. The events continue to inspire me, and I still take oh so many photos of the details, noting what I would like to incorporate into my clients' weddings and events. I no longer look at these parties in a "someday" sort of way, however, with the hope I might be able to produce one in the far off future. Today, I take in the elements as a seasoned planner and designer, looking more closely at the purpose than at the production.
None of this is to be misconstrued. I am not in the least jaded by the conference — quite the opposite. I am every inch the wedding planner, the event designer, and the business person I am due to this organization and the people who attend. During this trip, beyond education, I was reminded of who I am as a person, too.
Losing a parent is the most challenging thing that I have ever gone through. I have spent over 40 years being Louie Eppolito's daughter. In so many ways, he has defined my life. Who am I without him? A wife and a mother. A sister, a friend, and a daughter, still. But all of those identities are tied in someone else. Who I am is set in relation to who they are. There is always an "other" when I think about myself in those terms. My family is my North Star, the guiding light that signals home.
Yet this week, at Engage, I was allowed to be. Just be.
That is the real value of Engage. It is a community. It is family. It is a safety net and a tight rope, all at once. The founders, Rebecca and Kathryn, held emotional space for me, allowing me time to put the pieces back together before the conference. My friends, the ones who have become a second family to me, rallied around to make sure that I was well taken care of. They gave me permission to enjoy myself and be fully present, yet still allowed me to retreat and be alone when I needed a moment. There were times when I wanted to be alone, but they knew better and insisted on being my soft place to land. Engage was, by far, the safest space that I could have been at this time. It is where I found myself after being somewhat lost.
Given that Engage! is rooted in both community and education; I want to share the moment when it all came together for me. Priya Parker, the author of The Art of Gathering, was on stage. A master facilitator, Priya has dedicated her life to the study of how we meet one another, why we meet, and how those interactions can become more meaningful. Sitting in the ballroom, I watched as a series of hands went up and down in response to the questions Priya posed to us. Admittedly, I stood more than I sat as the questions became more complicated and increasingly more intimate. The pool of those standing got smaller. We all giggled at the sight of each other, each of us from a different segment of the industry. We were from all around the world. The circumstances that brought us out of our seats were radically different, but our purpose was the tie that bound us together. In those shaky, vulnerable moments, we were a team and a family.
I love my father, and he adored me. My work was one of the things he was most proud of, and my truth is that I feel most like myself when I am working. Whether that means walking my clients through a design demonstration, tasting a five-course menu, or stepping on stage to educate a group of my peers, work is where I find my strength. It is my solid ground, and it was at Engage that I finally stood firmly on it once again.
That footing is what let me laugh - out loud - throughout the week. It inspired me to create new offerings for my clients and my colleagues. During my time in Mexico, I did all the things and experienced all of the emotions. Rather than be the Master of the Universe, I was a guest at the events, experiencing what one would if they were to attend one of my weddings. I let go, and I got everything back in return.
By the time my session opened, I was 100% back on my game and ready to dive into my topic. I presented "Surviving the Dip - How to Live Through a Recession and Come Out Stronger." There seems to be this dark cloud over economics right now. People are wondering when the recession will be coming, and how bad it will be.
In my career, I have survived several economic downturns. Whether it was as a manager during the time after 9-11 or during the bursting of the real-estate bubble in 2008, recessions are frightening, but they needn't be. Maybe it's because I have lived through them already, or because I am someone who loves a challenge - I see dips in business and slow periods as a time for rejuvenation.
My business is unique in that I have chosen to stay intentionally small. Each year, I produce anywhere from 6 - 10 weddings and events. This is my perfect number. It allows me to be fully present with my clients, fully immerse myself in the design process, and stay educated. What it also allows me to do is explore other opportunities that interest me. Education, for example, has been a cornerstone of my life. I believe that peer to peer education is one of the most valuable ways that we learn, and developing courses that could reach a wide range of wedding professionals was very important to me. A bibliophile, I read constantly and have always wanted to write a book. As of today, I have published two! (Big launch plans for 2020 - stay tuned.) I love coaching, mentoring, speaking, and creating. I love publishing. All of these activities connect to my passion and purpose - which is to create extraordinary events for extraordinary people. To do that on a larger scale without stretching myself too thin meant that I needed to create new businesses, and I now teach extraordinary people how to produce extraordinary events. And I am committed to documenting it all.
That is how you survive a recession. That is how you make it through a dip. Rather than revert into yourself and operate from a place of fear, you dig deep into who you are, and you branch out from a place of love and commitment. You drill down on what matters, you continue to create for those who see the world the way that you do (or who want to see the world through your eyes) and you expand by doing more of what matters. That is what I wanted to inspire others to do, and the feedback has been so rewarding. For the last ten days, I have been processing my thoughts, combing through photos, answering emails, and messaging those people that I had truly special moments with.
To My Couples: I love the reactions you had to the photos and videos I shared. From my Instagram to my TikTok and even on Twitter, the responses to the design, entertainment, and quotes I shared was extraordinary. I love that you see the value in my attending conferences like this. I realize that I am "away" from you for days at a time, and you know that the reason I attend, listen, speak, and learn is so that I can be a better wedding planner, designer, and business owner for you.
To My Colleagues and Community: How lucky are we to have this space? I am forever grateful for the friendships that I have made, the inspiration you have given me, and the commitment we make to each other each and every day to move the industry forward.
To Rebecca, Kathryn, and Team Engage: My 10th Engage! was nothing that I expected and exactly what I needed. Thank you does not seem like enough, but thank you. I cannot wait for Engage! 2020 and will forever be grateful to be a part of this family.
Always….
0 notes
nofomoartworld · 7 years
Text
Hyperallergic: Censorship, Not the Painting, Must Go: On Dana Schutz’s Image of Emmett Till
Dana Schutz, “Open Casket” (2016), in the 2017 Whitney Biennial (photo by Benjamin Sutton/Hyperallergic)
The presence of blackness in a Whitney Biennial invariably stirs controversy — it’s deemed to be unfit or not enough, or too much. The current Whitney Biennial is no exception — the art press has been awash this past week with reports of a protest staged in front of a painting of a disfigured Emmett Till lying in his casket and a letter penned by an artist who called for the work to be removed and destroyed. The painter is Dana Schutz, a white American. The author of the letter is Hannah Black, a black-identified biracial artist who hails from England and resides in Berlin. The protestors are a youthful coalition of artists and scholars of color. The curators being called on the carpet are both Asian American. Debates about the painting and the letter rage on social media, to the exclusion of discussion of the many works by black artists in the show, most notably Henry Taylor’s rendering of Philando Castile dying in his car after being shot by police. This multicultural melodrama took a rather perverse turn on March 23, when an unknown party hacked Schutz’s email address and committed identity theft by submitting an apologia under her name to the Huffington Post and a number of other publications; it was printed and then retracted. Up to now, none of Schutz’s detractors have addressed whether they think it’s fine to punish the artist by putting words in her mouth.
Henry Taylor, “THE TIMES THAY AINT A CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH!” (2017) in the 2017 Whitney Biennial (photo by Benjamin Sutton/Hyperallergic)
I would never stand in the way of protest, particularly an informed one aimed at raising awareness of the politics of racial representation, a subject that I’ve tackled in various capacities for more than 30 years. A group of artists staging enraged spectatorship before an artwork in a museum strikes me as an entirely valid symbolic gesture. A reasoned conversation about how artists and curators of all backgrounds represent collective traumas and racial injustice would, in an ideal world, be a regular occurrence in art museums and schools. As an artist, curator, and teacher, I welcome strong reactions to artworks and have learned to expect them when challenging issues, forms, and substance are put before viewers. On many occasions I have had to contend with self-righteous people — of all of ethnic backgrounds — who have declared with conviction that this or that can’t be art or shouldn’t be seen. There is a deeply puritanical and anti-intellectual strain in American culture that expresses itself by putting moral judgment before aesthetic understanding. To take note of that is not equitable with defending whiteness, as critic Aruna D’Souza has suggested — it’s a defense of civil liberties and an appeal for civility.
I find it alarming and entirely wrongheaded to call for the censorship and destruction of an artwork, no matter what its content is or who made it. As artists and as human beings, we may encounter works we do not like and find offensive. We may understand artworks to be indicators of racial, gender, and class privilege — I do, often. But presuming that calls for censorship and destruction constitute a legitimate response to perceived injustice leads us down a very dark path. Hannah Black and company are placing themselves on the wrong side of history, together with Phalangists who burned books, authoritarian regimes that censor culture and imprison artists, and religious fundamentalists who ban artworks in the name of their god. I don’t buy the argument offered by a pair of writers in the New Republic that the call to destroy Schutz’s painting is really “a call for silence inside a church”; the vituperative tone of the letter hardly suggests a spiritual dimension — not to mention that the biblical allusion to silence in the church seems to come from a Corinthians passage about requiring women’s submission and obedience! I suspect that many of those endorsing the call have either forgotten or are unfamiliar with the ways Republicans, Christian Evangelicals, and black conservatives exploit the argument that audience offense justifies censorship in order to terminate public funding for art altogether and to perpetuate heterosexist values in black communities.
At the Whitney, a protest against Dana Schutz' painting of Emmett Till: "She has nothing to say to the Black community about Black trauma." http://pic.twitter.com/C6x1JcbwRa
— Scott W. H. Young (@hei_scott) March 17, 2017
Black and her supporters argue that the painting is evidence of white insensitivity; that a “painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist” cannot “correctly” represent white shame; that it’s an example of an unacceptable practice of white artists transmuting black suffering into profit; that white artists who want to be good should not treat black pain as material because it is not their “subject matter”; and that Emmett Till’s mother made her son’s dead body “available to Black people as an inspiration and warning” (my emphasis). The mainstream media’s “willingness” to circulate images of black people in distress is equated with public lynching. Despite attempts by her supporters to suggest that Black doesn’t really want to destroy the artwork, she recommends this explicitly in her opening line. The insistence that white people cannot understand black pain and only seek to profit from the spectacle of black suffering is reiterated throughout.
It is difficult to reason with the enraged, but I think it necessary to analyze these arguments, rather than giving them credence by recirculating them, as the press does; smugly deflecting them, as museum personnel is trained to do; or remaining silent about them, as many black arts professionals continue to do in order to avoid ruffling feathers or sullying themselves with cultural nationalist politics. (As a commercially successful young black artist once confessed to me over dinner, “My dealer says collectors don’t want to hear about my problems.”) Hannah Black’s letter can and should be unpacked separately from an interpretation of Schutz’s painting as a painting, or as the expression of a white person’s sentiment.
Black makes claims that are not based in fact; she relies on problematic notions of cultural property and imputes malicious intent in a totalizing manner to cultural producers and consumers on the basis of race. She presumes an ability to speak for all black people that smacks of a cultural nationalism that has rarely served black women, and that once upon a time was levied to keep black British artists out of conversations about black culture in America. Her argument is laced with an economically reductionist view of artistic practice and completely avoids consideration of the visual strategies employed by Schutz. Some of her supporters assert (without explanation) that abstraction in and of itself is illegitimate for representing a traumatic figure, a claim that ignores key 20th-century aesthetic debates about the problems with realistic depictions of extreme violence.
Kara Walker, “A Subtlety” at Domino Sugar Factory (photo by Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)
Furthermore, in her letter, Black does not consider the history of anti-racist art by white artists. She does not recognize that the trope of the suffering body that originated in Western art with the figure of the Christian martyr informs much representation of racialized oppression — by white and black artists. She does not account for the fact that black artists have also accrued social capital and commercial gain from their treatment of black suffering. Numerous black artists have depicted enslaved bodies, lynched bodies, maimed bodies, and imprisoned bodies in the early stages of their careers — and then moved away from such politically charged subject matter without having their morality or sense of responsibility impugned. Others, like Kara Walker, who delve into complicated racial fantasies that are tinged with abjection or eroticism, have been on the receiving end of character assassinations by black people who find the work disrespectful or prurient and claim to speak for “the community.” Whether Black intends it or not, her dismissive treatment of Schutz’s painting, her essentialist position on black and white racial identities, and her use of offense as a rationalization for censorship reinforce elitist and formalist views that ethical considerations don’t belong in the aesthetic interpretation of art.
The authority to speak for or about black culture is not guaranteed by skin color or lineage, and it can be undermined by untruths. My 25 years of teaching art have shown me that a combination of ignorance about history and the supremacy of formalism in art education — more than overt racism — underlie the failure of most artists of any ethnicity to address racial issues effectively. Many young black artists harbor deep insecurities about their capacity to “represent the race” because their Eurocentric art education leaves them with few tools or references to work with. Only a privileged few hail from socially engaged families committed to exposing their children to black art, history, and cultural traditions. They also face intense social pressure from teachers, peers, and art world power brokers not to “rock the boat” with political discussions about race. I myself was once grilled at a job interview by the white male search committee chair about whether I agreed with black artists’ criticisms of Kara Walker — which I understood immediately to be the litmus test of my acceptability at an elite institution.
As a teacher I’ve been privy to dozens of confessions from students of color at elite art schools who have been scrutinized and intimidated by visiting artists, professors, and peers if they’re perceived as obsessed with race or overly concerned with politics. I’ve been screamed at by frantic students who are afraid of calling themselves “black artists” because arts professionals have warned them not to do so. While elite art schools deploy tokenist inclusion strategies to create the impression of diversity, they actively avoid revising curricula and discourses of critique; the end result is that they produce artists and curators who lack formal opportunities to engage with critical race discourses and histories of anti-racist cultural production. In the absence of informed discussion, we get unadulterated rage.
The July 23, 1964 edition of Jet magazing, which featured the photographs of the murder of Emmett Till. (via Pinterest/jetcityorange.com)
Hannah Black claims to know more about black suffering than Schutz, but her treatment of history could use more accuracy and depth. She claims that Mamie Till wanted her son’s body to be visible to black people as an inspiration and a warning; however, according to Emmitt Till’s cousin Simeon Wright, who was with him the night of his capture and attended his funeral, Mamie Till said “she wanted the world to see what those men had done to her son” (my emphasis). There was no exclusion of non-black people implied, nor was it a deviation from the custom of having an open casket. That casket was donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture by Till’s family to be on view for all, not just black, people. Scholar Christina Sharpe’s assertion in an interview with Hyperallergic that if no white people attended the funeral, no whites were supposed to see the casket doesn’t hold. The trial of Till’s murderers was filmed and shown widely, as were photographs of his funeral. Those photographs galvanized the Civil Rights Movement: activist leaders strategically and adeptly circulated them to encourage blacks and whites in the North to join the struggle, and in order to shame politicians by casting doubts on America’s adherence to its democratic ideals.
My mother, a Cuban immigrant, arrived in New York shortly before Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. She was not physically present at his funeral, but saw pictures of him in the casket and learned about his death from the news. She was so appalled by the violence that she never got over it. She talked to me about the Till case throughout my childhood and refused to let me or my brothers visit the Deep South. She was a pathologist who performed hundreds of autopsies, but the image of a disfigured Emmett Till in the casket left an indelible mark on her memory as the archetypal representation of American racism.
Black claims that Schutz’s painting is yet one more example of white representation of black suffering as an exercise in commercial exploitation. She also suggests that such representations cater to a morbid fascination with black death that she associates with lynching as a public spectacle. It is undeniable that reality TV shows lionizing cops in pursuit of an endless stream of black and brown men are extremely lucrative for their white producers. It’s also true that there are plenty of examples of simplistic and fetishistic representations of black bodies in Western art and advertising. However, it is reductive and inaccurate to claim that all treatment of black suffering by white cultural producers is driven by commercial interests and sadistic voyeurism. Black overlooks an important history of white people making anti-racist art, often commissioned by Civil Rights activists.
That history extends back to 19th-century abolitionists who used photographs of the branded hands and scourged backs of slaves to denounce the inhumanity of slavery and to target white audiences in the North. It includes the works made by white artists Paul Cadmus and John Steuart Curry, who drew and painted blacks struggling against white mobs for the 1935 exhibition An Art Commentary on Lynching, organized at the behest of the NAACP in support of its anti-lynching campaign. It also includes Charles Moore’s and Danny Lyon’s celebrated documentary photographs of police brutality toward black Civil Rights activists that circulated among white people at home and abroad, and helped push a reluctant US Congress to pass Civil Rights legislation. It encompasses the Minimalist sound piece “Come Out,” composed by avant-garde musician Steve Reich in 1966 for a benefit for the Harlem Six upon the request of a Civil Rights activist. Reich’s piece consists of a looped sound recording of Daniel Hamm, a young black man in Harlem who was a victim of false arrest and police violence. The speech fragment repeats his explanation of how he turned his physical suffering into spectacle, making one of his bruises bleed visibly so that the police would finally take him to a hospital.
In citing these examples, I do not mean to suggest that all artistic representations of black oppression by white artists and all curatorial efforts to address race are well intentioned, or that they are all good. However, the argument that any attempt by a white cultural producer to engage with racism via the expression of black pain is inherently unacceptable forecloses the effort to achieve interracial cooperation, mutual understanding or universal anti-racist consciousness. There are better ways to arrive at cultural equity than policing art production and resorting to moralistic pieties in order to intimidate individuals into silence. Indeed, the decolonization of art institutions that Black’s supporters claim to want entails critical analysis of systemic racism coupled with a rigorous treatment of art history and visual culture. Arguing that Schutz’s painting must be destroyed because whites aren’t allowed to depict black suffering, blaming Schutz for capitalizing on the entire history of racist violence in America, suggesting, as some have done on social media, that she’s tainted by having collectors who are heartless real estate developers, while ignoring the work by a dozen or so black artists in the biennial is not going to advance anything.
Over the past 40 years, critics, cultural historians, and artists themselves have devoted a good deal of attention to the problems they see with such exhibitions as Harlem on My Mind, The N*gger Drawings, and “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art and such white artists as Rob Pruitt and Kelley Walker, whose treatments of black subjects have been deemed exploitative. Black British artist Isaac Julien and art historian Kobena Mercer first gained international attention in the 1980s for their critical analysis of white artist Robert Mapplethorpe’s depictions of black men, launching an extensive debate that eventually resulted in Mercer altering his original stance to acknowledge more complexity and complicity in interracial relations within gay subcultures. My point here is that reasoned assessment involves more nuanced evaluative criteria, ones that do not essentialize racial identity, impute intent, or ignore the way distinct cultural forms hold differing degrees of power when it comes to racial relations.
The impact of an individual artist’s single, non-mass-produced artwork is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the coercive power of an advertising campaign or a Hollywood blockbuster, and to discuss their effects as if they were the same is hyperbolic and unjust. True, Dana Schutz did not create her painting at the request of Civil Rights activists — however, the fact that she was stirred to resurrect the image of Emmett Till’s open casket is a sign of the success of the Black Lives Matter movement in forging awareness of patterns of state violence by politicizing the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, and others. The specter of Till’s death at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan lingers behind these more recent deaths at the hands of the police. Though six decades apart, the circulation of images from these tragedies serves the same function — and sadly signals how little American society and race relations have changed. That is not what mainstream public education teaches American children, and it is not what white liberals would have Americans believe. Schutz is stepping out of line with the dominant culture in underscoring the connection.
Schutz has stated clearly that she never intends to sell the painting, so there is little evidence that she’s seeking to enrich herself by it. Artists, myself included, often explore what troubles them for reasons other than personal gain — and if I want an art world that can handle more than pretty pictures and simplistic evocations of identity, I understand that I will have to support not only difficult subjects but clumsiness and mistakes. Though Schutz is not known for painting works about social issues, her inclination to respond to a heightened awareness of violence and injustice is hardly unusual and not inherently opportunistic; other white artists have changed their approach and focus in times of intense social unrest.
The Art Workers’ Coalition “And babies” (1969) has been described as “easily the most successful poster” opposing the Vietnam War. (photo via Wikipedia)
Philip Guston, “Untitled (Poor Richard)” (1971) (photo by Benjamin Sutton/Hyperallergic)
Philip Guston, for example, dropped abstraction in the 1960s and began making eccentric renderings of Klansmen and cartoons lampooning Richard Nixon. The Art Workers’ Coalition created the iconic, antiwar “And Babies” poster by reframing a news photo of the Mai Lai Massacre featuring dead Vietnamese people killed by US soldiers in 1969. Robert Gober, not known for an ongoing commitment to racial issues, produced what he saw as a commentary on white guilt by juxtaposing a white sleeping man with a black hanged man in a 1989 lithograph — and generated a similar controversy to today’s when black employees at the Hirshhorn Museum, where it was exhibited, protested. Hannah Black demands that all whites wallow in shame about racist violence against blacks, but in the case of Gober’s work, his attempt to represent white guilt did not prevent a protest. And despite that protest, Gober sold his piece to Harvard University, whereas Schutz has pledged not to sell hers at all.
The most perplexing criticism that’s been bandied about regarding Schutz’s painting, both on social media and in discussions I’ve had, is that some great harm has been inflicted by the act of abstraction, as if the only “responsible” treatment of racial trauma is mimetic realism. Strangely, though Henry Taylor’s painting of Philando Castile is no more realist in its rendering than Schutz’s, he’s been left alone by protesters. I would have liked to think that the days of Black Arts Movement militancy were long gone, but it seems that for some, they are not. There was a time when political correctness in black art was linked with realist aesthetics and didacticism, but it’s been widely since recognized that this stance led to the marginalization of black abstractionists. Masters such as Romare Bearden, Bob Thompson, and Alma Thomas, and even contemporary abstractionists like Jennie Jones, have bristled at the notion that authentic blackness must be equated with realism and that black art must be subject to sociological approval before being evaluated aesthetically.
Alma Thomas, “Apollo 12 ‘Splash Down’” (1970), acrylic and graphite on canvas, 50 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches (courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY)
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding at work in damning abstraction by associating it with erasure and irresponsibility. Abstraction, like mimeticism, is an aesthetic language that can be interpreted and used politically in a range of ways. It doesn’t necessarily mean erasure, but it does complicate the connection between perception and intellection — something that deeply thoughtful painters like Gerhard Richter have taken advantage of in order to make us reflect on how photographic images represent history and structure memory. Jacob Lawrence “abstracted” his black figures, not to obscure their humanity but to explore new ways of evoking ethnic identity and communal purpose through color and dynamism. The story of how the CIA championed Abstract Expressionism at the height of the Cold War to counter Socialist Realist propaganda is well known; however, abstraction can also be mandated by religious beliefs or, in the repressive contexts of many authoritarian states, serve as a rejection of narrow-minded populism. Perhaps the best argument in favor of abstraction was articulated by Theodor Adorno after the Holocaust, when he asserted that realist representations of atrocity offer simple voyeuristic pleasure over a more profound grasp of the horrors of history.
Whether or not we like the painting or consider it her greatest work — I do not, but think it still has value — Schutz’s decision to refract an iconic photograph through the language of abstraction has forced the art world out of its usual complacency and complicated the biennial’s uniformly celebratory reviews. She has, perhaps inadvertently, blown the lid off of a biennial that features an almost too perfect blend of messy painting, which appeals to conservatives, and socially engaged art, which appeals to the more politically minded. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not such a bad thing, given the ghastly state of American political culture at this moment.
The 2017 Whitney Biennial continues at the Whitney Museum (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan) through June 11.
The post Censorship, Not the Painting, Must Go: On Dana Schutz’s Image of Emmett Till appeared first on Hyperallergic.
from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2nZKfxd via IFTTT
0 notes